Josh Donaldson sparked a benches-clearing incident on Saturday after calling White Sox shortstop Tim Anderson “Jackie,” which means Jackie Robinson. Aaron Boone spent the remainder of that day and a while earlier than the 2 groups’ subsequent sport Sunday, getting “to the bottom of this.”
“We’re trying to do as much as we can to diffuse it and just play ball,” Boone mentioned Sunday. “I talked with JD [Davis] and a few other players to address this and get to the bottom of this, get the context and the history of this. With what’s gone on between the two players and the two teams over the last week or two, I certainly understand why that would be sensitive.”
Boone spent just about the whole lot of the media session speaking about Donaldson. Rather than instantly siding together with his participant as many managers would do, Boone made it clear that he didn’t assist his third baseman calling a Black participant “Jackie,” even when it was meant as some kind of unusual joke.
“I don’t believe there was any malicious intent in that regard,” Boone mentioned. “This is just somewhere, that in my opinion, he should not be going.”
The skipper doesn’t consider any extra on-field points will come of it. Both groups emptied their benches and bullpens when Chicago catcher Yasmani Grandal confronted Donaldson throughout Saturday’s sport.
“I understand the reaction, but Josh has been very forthcoming with the history of it and the context of it,” Boone mentioned. The context he was referring to was Anderson calling himself a contemporary Jackie Robinson throughout a 2019 interview, which Donaldson mentioned he was referencing. Boone readily acknowledged that Donaldson’s feedback have been “not a great thing” however understanding the historical past of Anderson’s previous feedback modified the context for him.
“When I first heard the name Jackie, I was really taken aback,” Boone said. “Frankly, I was upset about it myself. When you hear the story of it — again, I don’t think [Donaldson] should say that even if there is a perceived relationship or whatever — but the original story of where it was born out of, and a few years of saying that, I’m less taken aback by it at that point. I sit here as a white guy and that it did change the context for me, I also understand how it can be offensive and upsetting. But since it was born out of that article, it does to me change the context.”
Boone mentioned he spoke with Michael Hill, Major League Baseball’s senior vice chairman of on-field operations, following the incident. Hill, who’s Black, informed Boone that the league could be doing an investigation. Within the Yankees’ clubhouse, a number of conversations passed off as properly.
“He’s talked to guys individually,” Boone mentioned of Donaldson. “He and I and a few others talked in my office together as well. I’m sure he’ll continue to do that.”
Boone mentioned he obtained the sense that this is not going to create any kind of lingering rigidity within the clubhouse and repeatedly talked about how forthcoming Donaldson has been.
“This is sensitive. You gotta read the room in that sense,” Boone mentioned, later including that he needs Donaldson to “rein it in” and needs that he was extra conscious of how critical it’s to invoke Jackie Robinson, who he referred to as “the face of civil rights” and “one of the most important figures in our history.”
()
Source: www.bostonherald.com