A Unique Perspective On the Josh Donaldson- Tim Anderson Situation
You’re a reader of Off the Bench Baseball so you’re surely aware of the incident(s) between Tim Anderson and Josh Donaldson that have made national headlines recently, therefore a comprehensive rehashing of the timeline is unnecessary. Yet to be clear that we’re not talking about Donaldson’s nudging of Anderson off of third base on a play in Chicago on May 13th, let’s do a brief review of the facts of the situation that are not in dispute.
Benches emptied on May 21st in the Bronx after Donaldson exchanged words with Anderson, and later Anderson’s teammate Yasmani Grandal, as a result of Donaldson referring to Anderson as “Jackie” on more than one occasion (a reference to Anderson saying “I feel like today’s Jackie Robinson” in a Sports Illustrated article from 2019.) MLB later suspended Donaldson for one game for his “disrespectful” comment that was a “contributing factor in a bench clearing incident”.
Obviously there’s plenty of subtext there which is where and when opinions start to veer off in different directions. Most of those opinions, both informed and otherwise, have already been expressed countless times, so again there’s no need for an extensive recap. Yet perhaps with a quick review of some of the more salient viewpoints, we may land at the reality that this topic not only needs to still be discussed now a couple of weeks later, but indefinitely until incidents like this one no longer occur.
Let’s start with Donaldson referring to Anderson as “Jackie” on more than one occasion, by Donaldson’s admittance. In 2022 this shouldn’t need to be explained, but for the purposes of clarity, Tim Anderson is one of only a very few prominent African Americans in MLB. Jackie Robinson was the only African American in either the National or American League when he began his career with Brooklyn. With that context, if you truly believe that Donaldson wasn’t identifying Anderson by his race with the comment, then the conversation that needs to be had far exceeds the time and space we have here today. We’ll come back to that in a minute, but it’s important to note that although Anderson is clearly aware of the race connection to Robinson, in the oft referred to SI article, the self-made comparison to Robinson was referring to breaking the “have fun barrier” in MLB – Anderson was not claiming to be a civil rights pioneer or an all-time great player.
Donaldson later explained that he meant the jab at Anderson as a friendly inside joke. African American individuals being identified by their race in a “joking” manner or in a manner that is supposed to be complimentary is nothing new of course. Heck in Yankees history alone, Casey Stengel referred to Elston Howard as his “eight ball” which was also meant as a friendly joke. Paul O’Neill once described Tim Anderson as someone who just “looks like an athlete”, like “he could be a DB or a point guard” on a Yankees broadcast.
Of course, comments like those are neither funny nor complimentary, and the reason they came and went without incident is because nobody said or did anything about it. Howard was beloved not only because he was a great ballplayer but also because he let indignities from his manager slide. Had he answered back (like Anderson did with Donaldson) fans and the media’s perception of him certainly would have been different. O’Neill wasn’t confronted about ignoring Anderson’s baseball instincts* which is a de facto approval that insinuating Anderson was only good because he was athletic enough to play other sports – sports in which the players are predominantly Black – is appropriate. (*Anderson isn’t in the top quarter in MLB in sprint speed but still has an 80 percent career stolen base success rate – i.e., he’s a pretty observant and astute baseball player.)
I’m normally not one to share too much personal information, but at this point it may help to clarify that I’m Caucasian and I’m married to an African American woman. We’ve been together pretty much every day for over 20 years and I’ve been part of an interracial family for that long as well. To be clear, this by no means makes me smarter than anybody or makes me a better person than anybody. However, it is relevant to today’s discussion because it does give me a different perspective than most people who look like me have.
It’s from that perspective that I can assure you, that although the above incidents are isolated examples, they are annoyingly common, almost daily, occurrences for African Americans, and it needs to stop. That is why we need to continue to talk about it, even as the “hot take” crowd in the media forget it and move on to something else. If you find it exhausting or tiresome to have to constantly be confronted about it or have to read about it, I ask you to consider how exhausting it is for Tim Anderson – or for African Americans who aren’t professional athletes – who have to be denigrated every day of their life.
Whatever term you’d like to use, be it micro-aggression, passive aggressiveness, or flat out racism in some cases, we need to stop identifying people by their race and more importantly, making jokes to do it. Far more often than not, it’s not funny (as Anderson made clear to Donaldson and Donaldson continued with his “jokes” anyway). Furthermore, if the individual does speak up and says that they don’t appreciate what’s being said to them, that doesn’t make them the aggressor – don’t treat them as such. Heck, Boomer Esiason took to his radio show to say that a Donaldson suspension would “devalue” who Donaldson is.
If you want to say that Donaldson admitted he screwed up and apologized and it’s time to move on, as Yankees de facto captain Aaron Judge mentioned, that’s fine*. We’re all ignorant about some things and make mistakes as a result. That doesn’t mean that this instance shouldn’t be acknowledged for what it is and shouldn’t incur a penalty, and MLB (for once) was right in suspending Donaldson, if for no other reason to send a message to the other ignoramuses in the game.
(*It must be noted, that although Judge was OK with moving on, none of Donaldson’s current teammates publicly defended him.)
Since I’m already up on my high horse, I’ll also add that in my experience when problems related to race arise, they’re more often borne from ignorance than out of hatred. That’s a fixable problem if our response as individuals is to want to understand, or at the very least to accept that some people are offended by certain behaviors and that it’s not our place to decide for them whether or not they should be offended. Of course, the best course is to simply ask “why” someone is offended when they are, and listen to them instead of demonizing them as the instigator.
As far as whether or not Josh Donaldson has learned anything time will tell. Regardless, we shouldn’t allow this story or the next instance like it to simply pass without acknowledging it’s a problem.
