Last night, a Wall Street Journal article was written entitled, “In the Mets Locker Room, an Old Slur Resurfaces”. If you are a New York Mets fan, you know that they have been subject to this type of ridicule in the past, and that there’s a certain journalist with an agenda that I will not name in this post.
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Surprisingly, that journalist isn’t the one who wrote the piece. Instead it was a 27-year-old journalist for the WSJ named Stu Woo. In his piece, Woo essentially paints the Mets pitching coach, 61-year old Dan Warthen, as a racist. If you would like to read the article, click here.
According to multiple reports, including Woo’s, here is what happened:
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“I’m sorry I called you a ‘Chinaman’ yesterday,” Warthen told Cutler.
“It’s OK,” Cutler replied.
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“I didn’t mean to insinuate –- I know you’re not Chinese,” Warthen said. He paused. “I thought it was a pretty good joke, though.”
“It was,” Cutler said, with a small laugh.
Warthen walked away.
Jeff Cutler is a 30-year old Japanese American from suburban Boston who is the interpreter for Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka.
Ok, so far I’ve read that a man apologized to another man for making an insensitive comment. Pretty nice gesture if I might say. There aren’t too many people who would “man up” and admit to making a mistake and apologizing for it.
But here’s where it goes wrong. Stan makes the entire article about him. Stan is a 27-year old Chinese-American with an agenda.
“Was he saying that he wanted to apologize for saying “Chinaman” only because he’d said it to a man of Japanese, rather than Chinese, descent? Did he think that the word itself was OK to use—or that it was acceptable material for jokes?
Warthen might not have known my race, or even that I was a reporter; he could have missed the media credential hanging from my neck, too: My back was to him when he approached Cutler.”
The following morning, Woo was with Cutler as he was serving as Dice-K’s interpreter once again. After finishing his interview with Dice-K, Woo asked Cutler about the conversation with Warthen.
Were you offended by Warthen’s joke? I asked him.
“No,” Cutler said.
What was the joke? I asked.
“You should ask Dan about that,” Cutler replied.
If this isn’t screaming that this “journalist” isn’t chasing a personal agenda, I don’t know is. The sensitivity of people these days to even third-party interactions, are just out of control. It’s absolutely pathetic that someone will use a story like this to push his or her name to the forefront.
Could you imagine if the title of the story was, “Mets Coach Apologizes For Using Offensive Slur, We Need To See More Of This” ? But that wouldn’t get site hits. Pushing a liberal racist agenda would. Woo says that, ” As a 27-year-old Chinese American who grew up in San Francisco, I couldn’t remember the last time I heard the term “Chinaman,” a derogatory word originally given by white Americans to Chinese immigrants in the 19th century.”
Could you imagine the outrage if Warthen came over to Daniel Murphy and called him an “Irishman” in front of some Irish-American folks in the locker room? It could have been even worse if he didn’t see a reporter with his back to him. Yikes!
“On Tuesday afternoon I caught up with the Mets’ vice president of media relations, Jay Horwitz. Horwitz asked me to meet him and Warthen in the Mets dugout at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday to discuss the matter. But when I got to the Mets facility Wednesday, Horwitz said Warthen wasn’t going to comment. Cutler wasn’t in the locker room.”
Good, there was nothing to discuss. Being a weasel and a tattle tale isn’t going to get you anywhere. Man up kid. You are in a locker room. Lucky he didn’t call you or any of the other Asian people an even worse term (one that is actually more up to date than a 19th century slur). What would have happened if Warthen or another member of the Mets directly called him a bitch? Or maybe even worse, told him to f_ck off? Would a phone call to Fred Wilpon by Stan’s parents get the Mets staff member in trouble?
What being a tattle tale did do, was force the New York Mets to make an unnecessary public apology/statement. From the updated version of Woo’s story:
Late Wednesday, the Mets issued statements from both Warthen and general manager Sandy Alderson.
“I apologize for the thoughtless remarks that I made yesterday in the clubhouse. They were a poor attempt at humor but were wrong and inappropriate in any setting. I am very sorry,” Warthen said.
“On behalf of the entire organization, I apologize for the insensitive remarks made by of one of our staff members. The remarks were offensive and inappropriate and the organization is very sorry,” added Alderson.
In light of the Richie Incognito/Johnathan Martin fiasco, this is just another example of locker room culture being taken out of context to create fake outage. A man apologized for being, for lack of a better word, a douche to another guy. Get over it and stop being so god damn sensitive.
