Sigh

[shortround81]

Do better, baseball.

Jim Kaat Remarks

[Brock Beauchamp]

I like Kaat but he's an old man. I appreciate he didn't go with "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" and stuck to "I used hurtful language and I'm sorry".

[ashbury]

20 minutes ago, Brock Beauchamp said:

I like Kaat but he's an old man. I appreciate he didn't go with "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" and stuck to "I used hurtful language and I'm sorry".

I'm closer to his age than yours, so I can relate a little bit to a slip of the tongue that harkens back to older usages.  (I still trip up and say "stewardess" when "flight attendant" has been the preferred term for decades now.)  But honestly I have no idea where in his memory banks he pulled that phrase - I chalk it up to a casual racism in his youth that would have been a bit shocking to encounter even by the time I arrived on the scene 15 years later.  Because I feel like Kaat's basically a good human being, I'll be an optimist and say that maybe it shows we have made some progress as a society in his lifespan.  But that doesn't excuse the words he used, and his apology seems to reflect that he understands how ugly they were.

[shortround81]

Is what he said s*****? Yes. Am I also used to "old" people calling me "Oriental" instead of "Asian"? Also yes

[Brock Beauchamp]

46 minutes ago, ashbury said:

I'm closer to his age than yours, so I can relate a little bit to a slip of the tongue that harkens back to older usages.  (I still trip up and say "stewardess" when "flight attendant" has been the preferred term for decades now.)  But honestly I have no idea where in his memory banks he pulled that phrase - I chalk it up to a casual racism in his youth that would have been a bit shocking to encounter even by the time I arrived on the scene 15 years later.  Because I feel like Kaat's basically a good human being, I'll be an optimist and say that maybe it shows we have made some progress as a society in his lifespan.  But that doesn't excuse the words he used, and his apology seems to reflect that he understands how ugly they were.

Same. I also ran that phrase through various scenarios and came up with no even remotely justified usages of it. It's probably a holdover because let's face it, Kaat was well into elementary school by the time Jackie donned a Dodgers uniform. He surely has a head full of truly unfortunate phrases and thinking.

But he apologized and it seemed real. Hopefully he's a touch more careful from now on and we can all move on instead of trying to crucify an 82 year old man who grew up in a wildly different era. He seems like a genuinely decent guy so I hope this doesn't spiral out of control.

[Linus]

On 10/9/2021 at 12:02 PM, Brock Beauchamp said:

I like Kaat but he's an old man. I appreciate he didn't go with "I'm sorry if I offended anyone" and stuck to "I used hurtful language and I'm sorry".

Another age reference. Might want to be a little more nuanced. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

8 hours ago, Linus said:

Another age reference. Might want to be a little more nuanced. 

I’m in my 40s and have a bunch of super problematic language bouncing around in my skull because that’s the era I grew up in. Kaat is no different, except even more so. Acknowledging those exist is the only way to progress.

[AceWrigley]

I'd still play golf with the man. ?