If your first thought after seeing a baseball player make an error while you sit on your couch pounding Cheetos is to leave them racist comments, maybe you shouldn’t be acting on your tiny ideas.
Unfortunately, several people apparently don’t subscribe to that line of thinking, because their first thought was to immediately turn to childish, racist insults after Yu Chang — who is not a first baseman and has played very little first base in his professional career — attempted to turn a difficult double play from first base and ended up hitting the helmet of Yasmani Grandal. That allowed the runner to score from third, and the game was over.
Following the game, Yu assembled some of the comments he received into an Instagram story post and shared them on Twitter. Along with the comments, he included his own message and #StopAsianHate, a hashtag used to spread awareness of, and call for an end to, the rise of anti-Asian racism in the United States that has surged since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Exercise your freedom of speech in a right way, I accept all comments, positive or negative but DEFINITELY NOT RACIST ONES.
— Yu Chang 張育成 (@YutheSouljaBoy) April 13, 2021
Thank you all and love you all #StopAsianHate pic.twitter.com/xMaWc59wvt
There have been many worse plays by many more first basemen, from people who played first base for their whole careers. From a baseball perspective, it was purely a “forget it happened and move on” play. Even if it wasn’t — even if it was the worst play imaginable — nothing excuses hurling these kind of insults at another human being.
Be better. If you do this and call yourself a Cleveland fan, go somewhere else.