MLB Forces Josh Hader Into Sensitivity Training After Someone Dug Up His Old Tweets

Source – Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Josh Hader will be required to take sensitivity training and participate in the league’s diversity and inclusion initiatives after tweets from his past emerged during Tuesday’s All-Star Game.

After a bumpy outing in his first All-Star appearance, some racist and anti-gay tweets that Hader sent when he was a teenager surfaced. He apologized after the game.

“During last night’s game we became aware of Mr. Hader’s unacceptable social media comments in years past and have since been in communication with the Brewers regarding our shared concerns,” Major League Baseball said in a statement Wednesday. “After the game, Mr. Hader took the necessary step of expressing remorse for his highly offensive and hurtful language, which fails to represent the values of our game and our expectations for all those who are a part of it. The Office of the Commissioner will require sensitivity training for Mr. Hader and participation in MLB’s diversity and inclusion initiatives.”

You have to concede it was a tough look for MLB to have someone dig into the Tweets Josh Hader was putting out back when he was a stupid 17-year-old high school kid. The ones where he dropped the N-bomb:

The unambiguously homophobic stuff:

The rap lyrics you won’t be hearing at the next PussyHats march:

Miscellany:

And at least one that’s got to be awkward for the Mrs.:

It’s worth noting that the timing of the release of these Tweets, coming out on the night he was pitching in the All Star Game, had MLB scrambling to contain the damage:

All of which begs the question: How much can we hold people accountable for the dumb shit they said on social media back when they themselves were dumb little shits? Believe me, there’s not a guy over the age of 35 who doesn’t thank God that in high school he didn’t have a device in his pocket that would blast his thoughts out to the world. The reason Satan invented the Internet was to preserve every mistake you ever make for eternity, to come up and bite you in the ass later on.

But really, what’s the point of digging into someone’s teenage past just because he’s famous now? I don’t get these self-appointed Thought Police trying to destroy a guy’s career for the stuff he posted before he even had a career. When Josh Hader was 17, he probably had 50 Twitter followers and knew every one of them personally. So he was talking to an echo chamber of other, equally immature high school kids he was trying to make laugh. And we’re going to hold him accountable for that now that he’s 24? And, by the way, actively not Tweeting about how he hates gays or how wet pussies get around his big dick or whatever.

So, weird as this might sound, I think MLB got it right. Do I think he needs Sensitivity Training for something he said seven years ago? No. As a matter of fact I think all Sensitivity Training is just a bullshit way for corporations to deflect criticism and cover their asses when they’re caught in a PR disaster. But in this case, it’s just basically like a cop letting you off with a warning after you roll through a stop sign. If they’d have suspended him or taken money away from him, that would be an outrage. This is just Rob Manfred trying to put this one behind Hader, where it should have stayed all along. Now let’s all cut the shit when it comes to digging into people’s past to kill them for stuff they said at an age we were all young and dumb.