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When anti-wokeism goes south
From the baseball diamond to the convention podium.
The ESPN Daily podcast episode One Racial Slur Tore a Baseball Team Apart is about events at Florida’s Fort Myers High in 2023. A white assistant baseball coach sent a group message to the team that contained a racial slur. He quickly deleted it and said it was meant for some black war buddies. This was a year after an incident involving the n-word on the school’s junior varsity team. This coach, a new hire still in his probationary period, was fired.
Many parents of players thought firing the coach was too harsh a punishment, and the families of the two black players on the team were blamed. Later, the head coach was suspended with pay for grabbing one of the black players and for other incidents. Ultimately, the third-base coach, temporarily in charge, led a walkout of most of the team, leaving the two black players in the batter’s box and on-deck circle.
Bryant records the observations from an assistant coach on the opposing side:
As the bizarre scene unfolded, he was witnessing the antithesis of what sports were supposed to be about. The cliches of teamwork and togetherness were collapsing in real time. Players wearing the same uniform were not united against Estero [the opposing high school]. They were divided against…
