Gordon Wittenmyer has written about optioned and injured Cubs pitcher Carl Edwards, Jr. at the Sun-Times, and you’re going to want to read it today.
It’s a hard read, both because it is rough to see all that has gone wrong for Edwards in such a short time, and also because it is difficult to be confronted by just how bad things still are for African-American players in the world of baseball, 100 years after Jackie Robinson was born.
Imperfect storm: Carl Edwards Jr. fights through demotion, injury, racist messages in effort to return to Cubs https://t.co/0RaC2zpupI via @suntimes
— Gordon Wittenmyer (@GDubMLB) April 22, 2019
MLB recently began investigating racist comments Edwards received on Instagram, but they were far from the first Edwards ever received – online or in person. Edwards decided this time, he wanted the world to know what it’s still like.
Wittenmyer also spoke with Jason Heyward, and now Diamondback outfielder Adam Jones, each of whom speak so plainly about the racism they face that it’s almost like it’s second nature to them at this point. It’s just something that happens, of course. In 2019.
This kind of thing – about the sport you love – should make you very angry. It makes me very angry. It also makes me feel very helpless, knowing that I can’t fix it. All I can do, outside of sharing this article with you, is urge those around me to stand up if they hear something at the ballpark, or if they see something line. Just don’t let racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, etc. crap live and breathe out there without a challenge. Clearly, there are too many people who do not feel appropriate shame for the garbage they have rolling around in their worm-gnawed brains, and they should be corrected.
Stories like this, from Wittenmyer’s piece, should make all of us feel sick:
“It’s like it’s a new world,” Edwards said, “like, ‘Oh, yeah, Martin Luther King marched. Congratulations. It’s over with.’ This s— ain’t over with.
“I only said something [this time] because I want the world to know that it’s there.”
It was there as recently as the Cubs’ second series of the season, in Atlanta, when his fiancé and young kids were in the stands near heckling fans who got racist when he was pitching.
“My fiancé even said, ‘I wish you would play another sport,’ ” he said.