Four years before taking Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game away from Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new election law, Commissioner Rob Manfred pandered to “woke” activists by overreacting to one situation while underreacting to a far worse one.
Manfred suspended a player who childishly mocked an opponent’s ancestry yet ignored another who pulled a gun on a woman, leading to his arrest for felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Five weeks before his arrest, that player became the major league’s first to kneel during the national anthem as a protest.
This tale of double standards begins Oct. 27, 2017. In the third game of the World Series, the Houston Astros’ Yulieski Gurriel hit a home run off the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Yu Darvish, a native of Japan. After Gurriel returned to the dugout, cameras caught him manipulating his eyes to imitate Asian facial features and describing the pitcher as a “chinito,” Spanish for “Chinese boy.”
Ironically, Gurriel, a native of Cuba, played for one season in Japan, where Darvish began his professional career.
Nevertheless, outrage over the presumably racist behavior ensued immediately. The next day, Manfred suspended Gurriel for the first five games of the following season, and mandated off-season sensitivity training.
“There is no place in our game for the behavior or any behavior like the behavior we witnessed last night,” Manfred said. “There is no excuse or explanation that makes that type of behavior acceptable.”
On the day Manfred suspended Gurriel, police arrested Oakland Athletics’ catcher Bruce Maxwell at his apartment in Scottsdale, Ariz. The incident that led to his arrest began when a female driver delivering take-out food arrived at the catcher’s residence. Upon arriving, “she knocked on the screen door,” the police report stated, and found herself “staring straight at the barrel of a silver handgun.”
After the driver introduced herself, Maxwell “removed the handgun from her face and moved it to a position out of sight inside the residence,” the report continued. She gave Maxwell his order, then “walked away still in shock on what had just occurred,” the report stated, before calling police.
When police met her, she “was visibly upset and crying,” the report continued. “It took her several moments to calm herself in order to gather her thoughts.”
One officer who interviewed Maxwell stated in the report:
“I immediately noticed a strong odor of intoxicating liquor emanating from his breath. His eyes were bloodshot and watery. During the course of my interview, Maxwell would speak in an elevated voice (often yelling), utilize excessive profanities and was very inconsistent with his account of what had occurred.” (parentheses in original)
When asked whether he pointed the gun at the female driver, Maxwell “became verbally aggressive and stated he never should have been detained,” the report stated. “He began making anti-police statements and utilized excessive profanity.”
Police video substantiated the officer’s report. (Warning: Obscene language predominates)
Though Maxwell denied pointing a gun at the female driver, police arrested him after she identified him. In less than two weeks, a grand jury would indict Maxwell on felony aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and disorderly conduct.
Gurriel’s suspension, especially during a World Series, deflected attention from Maxwell’s arrest. Yet in the ensuing weeks and months, Manfred’s office began no investigation into Maxwell’s behavior. More importantly, neither advocates for women’s rights nor gun control protested publicly about it. On social media, pervasive silence from the “woke” replaced ubiquitous outrage.
Why?
Perhaps because Maxwell earned his “woke” credentials five weeks before his arrest. On Sept. 23, the catcher joined the growing number of NFL players protesting ostensible social inequality by kneeling during the anthem.
Ironically, Maxwell’s African-American father served in the United States Army in Germany.
“This now has gone from just a Black Lives Matter topic to just complete inequality of any man or woman that wants to stand for Their (sic) rights!” Maxwell wrote on his Twitter account. “My kneeling is what’s getting the attention because I’m kneeling for those who don’t have a voice.
“This goes beyond the black community. It goes beyond the Hispanic community because right now we’re having an indifference and racial divide in all types of people. It’s being practiced from the highest power we have right now in this country and it’s basically saying that it’s OK to treat people differently.”
Moments after Maxwell knelt, his team encouraged him on Twitter: “The Oakland A’s pride ourselves on being inclusive. We respect and support all of our players’ constitutional rights and freedom of expression.”
The A’s expressed that pride seven weeks before Maxwell’s protest. That August, the club fined outfielder Matt Joyce $54,000 and suspended him for two games after calling a fan who was taunting him an anti-homosexual slur.
Yet when Maxwell was arrested, the A’s neither suspended nor fined him.
The catcher continued receiving the club’s support in preparation for Spring Training in 2018. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser tweeted Feb. 13 that General Manager David Forst “says the A’s (sic) long relationship with Bruce Maxwell is a major reason why the team said early and often that he will remain the starting catcher this year.” (emphasis added)
That April, Maxwell pled guilty to disorderly conduct as part of a plea deal. In May, Canadian authorities refused to allow Maxwell into Toronto for the Athletics’ series against the Blue Jays because he had yet to be sentenced on a gun-related charge. In July, Maxwell received that sentence: two years’ probation and community service.
Three weeks before Maxwell pled guilty, Manfred suspended pitcher Steven Wright of the Boston Red Sox for 15 days. Police arrested Wright on Dec. 8, 2017 and charged him with misdemeanor domestic assault after arguing with his wife. Wright’s lawyer, Alex Little, said in a statement that his client “did not raise his hands at anyone.” Two weeks after Wright’s arrest, the Williamson County Courthouse in Tennessee retired the case.
“While it is clear that Mr. Wright regrets what transpired that evening, takes full responsibility for his actions, and has committed himself to the treatment and counseling components of the policy,” Manfred said in a statement, “I have concluded that Mr. Wright’s conduct on Dec. 8 violated the policy and warrants discipline.”
Manfred takes a severe approach toward domestic violence regardless of legal findings. In March 2016, the commissioner suspended the New York Yankees’ Aroldis Chapman for 30 games after an altercation with his girlfriend involving a firearm at his home. Though police made no arrests, Manfred found Chapman’s “acknowledged conduct to be inappropriate under the negotiated policy, particularly the use of a firearm and the impact of that behavior on his partner,” he said. (emphasis added)
Then in May, Manfred issued two longer suspensions. The Colorado Rockies’ Jose Reyes received one for 51 games despite prosecutors dropping assault charges two months earlier. The Atlanta Braves’ Hector Olivera then missed 82 games after being arrested for misdemeanor assault and battery.
As Horst was expressing support for Maxwell, Manfred’s office was investigating allegations that the Minnesota Twins’ Miguel Sano sexually harassed a photographer, who accused Sano of grabbing her by the wrist, kissing her and holding her against her will in 2015. The commissioner later cleared Sano.
Pressure from women’s groups forced Manfred and the Major League Baseball Players Association to negotiate a policy on domestic violence in their collective bargaining agreement. Yet throughout Maxwell’s major-league career — which ended when the Athletics released him in September 2018 — Manfred remained professionally apathetic about the catcher’s behavior.
Does Manfred need a negotiated policy with the players’ union to protect his sport’s integrity, or his own? Or are the “woke” more equal than others?
Only in the bizarre world of “woke” activism — and in the offices of a compliant commissioner — are childish impersonations worse than a felony indictment involving a deadly weapon.
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