I sure hope this is the last time I write about this.
- Yunel really looked apologetic. His opening statement was as close to perfect as you could have come up with in less than 24 hours. He did look totally sad that it had all come to this.
- Alex Anthopoulos said the right thing about education being needed.
- When the questions came, things didn't go so well. Yunel had a hard time clearly saying what the word meant to him. What he really should have stuck with was 'it is just how some Spanish speaking players greet each other. It's wrong. It's immature. But that's the way we do things.'
- Yunel should never have said 'I have gay friends.' He should have been told not to say that, unless he had someone could have named. Reporters, of course, asked who the gay friends are. Unfortunately we got a couple of stereotype answers. The guy that decorates my house? The guy that cuts my hair? Please. Awful answers.
- The question of 'why didn't anyone coach or teammate notice and say something?' was handled poorly by John Farrell. John said 'Yunel wrote things in his eyeblack all the time but I didn't read them because they were generally motivational or uplifting messages.' Oh really? If he did it all the time I'd be all the more curious about what he wrote each day. But, I understand they have to answer that way.They don't want to go down the line of having every player asked 'why didn't you say something?'.
- Farrell was asked about homophobia in the dressing room. He said it wasn't a problem. I'm sure that's not the true answer, but if he had said 'yes it is a problem, yes we have a lot to learn', which I'm sure would be the right answer, then he would have set himself up for follow up questions and that could have been a mess. I'm sure he was coached on that answer. I think Alex's answer saying 'more education is needed' was better and truer, but if John said 'yeah, man, you think this was homophobic, you should have been in the dressing room yesterday' then this story doesn't end. The idea of the press conference is to end the story.
In all, I thought Yunel handled himself well, in a very tough spot. I think a 3 game suspension is very fair. I'm glad the Jays are going to support You Can Play and GLAAD. And I hope we don't have to talk about this anymore. Here is a Tweet from Shi Davidi:
Latin media here are adamant offence should not be taken at Escobar slur. Say use is common and not considered derogatory
— Shi Davidi (@ShiDavidi) September 18, 2012