In an ongoing story where every piece seems more unbelievable than the last, Milton Bradley and those around him do not disappoint.
Milton Bradley’s mother, Charlena Rector, came to his defense yesterday. She shared nice thoughts about how he’s keeping his head up, and staying positive. But then she shared… something else.
“There is more behind the scenes that bothered Milton and made him uncomfortable in Chicago,” she said.
Pressed, Rector wouldn’t give details to verify her claims. She only offered that it involved Bradley’s 3-year-old son facing racial slurs at about the same time Bradley was complaining about what he considered a racist element of Cubs fans.
“Milton called me,” Rector said, “and said, ‘It’s bad enough what I am going through, but I can take it and go to the ballpark and pray games don’t last any more than nine innings. But my son?’ ” chicagotribune.com.
Oh my.
First, it is important to note that this claim is not coming directly from Bradley. This is the kind of thing that could be blurred slightly by the telephone process, but make no mistake: this is a serious, serious charge. This is in another universe than Bradley’s generic claims of racial slurs coming from the bleachers. And that first universe was pretty surprising.
The claim here is that Chicago Cubs fans – or at least folks in attendance at Cubs games this summer – were racially abusive toward Milton Bradley’s son. Who is a three-year-old child.
Look. It is wholly inappropriate to discard a claim like this out of hand, because it seems, on its face, to be so ridiculous. And let’s be clear: this does seem ridiculous. The idea that the worst hillbilly piece of crap on earth would hurl a racial slur at a three-year-old child is hard enough to swallow, let alone the idea that such an incident would not be met with a) a hundred bleacher bums smacking some sense into the guy, and b) a hundred media reports of the incident.
But as I said – it is not my place, or anyone else’s, to completely discard the claim. Is probably untrue or at least obscured? Sure. But we should just leave it at that, because you never know for sure.
What we do know is that Milton Bradley is a troubled dude, and he’s got a mom that clearly loves him very much.
Edit for Update: Apparently Bradley’s mother was suggesting that the comments took place at his son’s school, not at Wrigley. Still a serious charge, but not so much leveled at Cubs fans. Thus, this becomes relatively non-story-ish.