2024-08-14 02:40:02
On Monday, it was reported, and then later retracted, that Mayor Michelle Wu requested to meet with the Red Sox after Jarren Duran was caught using a homophobic slur on camera and subsequently suspended for two games. The reaction was predictably swift: The mayor had gone too far, and in so doing had only stoked the outrage provoked by Duran’s outburst. How could she?!
Were these complaints fair? Maybe. I don’t see much value to the mayor getting involved, but I also don’t see much of a downside. It’s just a thing a mayor does, whereas Duran’s lapse of judgment is something that ballplayers largely have — to their credit — avoided in the “everyone is watching” era. If Mayor Wu was ostensibly overreacting because Duran acted like a stupid asshole, it’s because Duran acted like a stupid asshole, and, IMHO, there’s not much more to it than that. If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime — and yes, this was, albeit in a different context, arguably a crime.
To speak for all of us as much as I can, it is, to put it mildly, a pisser to see the once-fallen prospect-turned-All Star Game MVP relapse into dipshit behavior. On the one hand, it’s not altogether surprising to learn a baseball player in his 20s thinks and talks like Duran, but on the other, far more correct hand, it’s fair to ask why his hundreds of peers are able to refrain from being stupid assholes in similar situations. Once you do, there’s really only one conclusion: For all his talents on the field, Duran is probably, at heart, a stupid asshole.
How much does this suck? Let me count the ways. One: The Red Sox, engaged in the most difficult stretch of games in a promising season, are without one of their best players for two games. Two: Duran, who famously feuded with fans in the outfield during a meltdown moment in 2022, seems not to have learned, or at least internalized, a damn thing. We’re talking about dipshit behavior that every other baseball player, no matter how red-assed, has somehow avoided for nearly three-quarters of the year. Three: People are defending him, which is to be expected among the edgelords, but less so among the usually more even-keeled set, which you’ll have to just trust me happened because a large part of it happened in my DMs. But it did. I have receipts you can’t see. Four: Everything Matt Gross writes here. That should be number one, probably.
Let me clear: If it was up to me, Duran would be suspended for at least five games, if, for no other reason, to prove a point that any utterly dipshit behavior won’t be tolerated by the team and the league. Baseball isn’t in the best place right now, and it needs all the fans it can get. The LGBTQ+ community isn’t just a fanbase to avoid insulting; it’s one to be cultivated. While I cannot speak for it directly, I can say confidently that there is something magical about baseball that cuts across every single barrier imaginable, sexuality among them, and while I’ve said this before, the online trans baseball fan community is probably my favorite of any subgroup of any kind. I love ball, they love ball, and I love how much they love ball, etc.
The point is this that sports belongs to all of us, and when Duran does stupid shit it makes us all sad, but that’s no reason to excuse it away or minimize it. The only way forward is to look it in the face, confront it, and try, even it’s a fool’s errand, to get Duran to truly understand the error of his ways. Even simply accounting for his age, that might be hard. Accounting further for his personality, it may be impossible. But that’s not a reason to avoid it; it’s why we, and the league, and the team, and even maybe the mayor are determined to try. We don’t do it because it’s easy; we do it because it’s hard. If it doesn’t work, then hey, it’s just baseball, what are you gonna do? But imagine, if only for a second: What if it did?
