UPDATE: Jake Arrieta explains the Tweet in his own words.
We can debate until we’re Cubbie blue in the face what Chicago Cubs Pitcher Jake Arrieta truly meant with his bizarre, hostile Tweet. All we know for sure is:
1.) It’s his genuine feelings as he has neither apologized, nor walked it back nor even made a public comment on it in the five days since its posting.
2.) It was a celebration of Donald Trump defeating Hillary Clinton, and an attack on Hollywood stars who said they would leave the country if Trump won.
3.) This wasn’t good for anybody involved, including himself.
https://twitter.com/keithlaw/status/796376092042989570?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
At best, it was simplistic ignorance and general divisiveness.
At worst it was Anti-Semitism.
I totally concur with the response from ESPN Analyst Keith Law: it does come off as a bit Anti-Semitic. Like Law, I am also not Jewish. Not always, but on occasion the following phrases are coded expressions of Anti-Semitism: “Hollywood establishment,” Hollywood elites,” “liberal elites” and “coastal elites.”
Isn’t it perplexing and contradictory how the word “elite” is the ultimate compliment in the world of sports, but yet an extreme pejorative in the political realm?
The Tweet certainly reads as if it was uttered by a South Park character, one of the crude redneck parody background players who yell sentences like:
“If you din’t love this country, you can GIT OUT!”
That sentiment is a very close sibling to “Dey took YER jobs!” and if that quote appeared had appeared as the very next tweet in the Jake Arrieta Twitter account timeline, it would have seemed like a natural progression.
Cubs president Theo Epstein, who is Jewish and gave a considerable sum of money to the Clinton campaign, said at Major League Baseball’s winter meetings that he hasn’t made up his mind about Arrieta’s Tweet.
“I’m still processing that, too,” Epstein told the Chicago Tribune. “I believe in the First Amendment. But I also believe we should be mindful of how other people feel.”
Epstein is still “processing” because he has to balance two diametrically opposed ideas. On one hand, the closest you can come (and this is really stretching it here) to finding something positive about this situation is to say something to the effect of:
“Hey, he’s expressing his political beliefs, most athletes talk, but never say anything, they’re always on brand instead of actually standing up for anything, so at least he used his powerful platform to voice his opinions, and that’s what democracy is all about.”
In the NBA, many prominent figures, including Head Coaches Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr and Stan Van Gundy as well as players Jabari Parker and Joel Embiid, have expressed extremely strong opinions on the election’s outcome.
On the other hand, you can never normalize hate-speech, especially now, at a time when the owner and publisher of a white nationalist, Anti-Semitic website has just been appointed Senior Adviser to the White House.
More than ever we need to “stay woke” as the Millenials like to say because we’re entering frighteningly uncharted waters these next four years. A man Arrieta supported, a man with zero experience working in government, will now be the Chief Executive of our country. All the while his right hand man is arguably the nation’s top purveyor of hateful bigoted trash.
While this demographic of the United States will legitimately assume power through a valid electoral process, they are not the majority in this country. Hillary Clinton still won the popular vote, and she won it by a margin greatly than three men who were actually elected President. Final estimates project her to win the popular vote by close to 2,000,000.
The Trump supporter also does not hold a majority within the Chicago Cubs fanbase.
The City of Chicago, with a turnout rate 15% higher than the national average, voted as blue as Jake Arrieta’s alternate road jersey.
Clinton won 84% of the Chicago electorate, a statistic indicative of just how unpopular sentiments expressed by the 2015 National League Cy Young Award winner’s are in the second city.
As they say in politics, “play to your base,” and Arrieta did the polar opposite of that, and it’s always bad for business.
All Cubs fans must now deal with the cognitive dissonance of what he said. One of your favorite players just said something that makes your view of Jake Arrieta the baseball player insignificant when juxtaposed against Jake Arrieta the human being.
That previous sentence brought to by an individual wearing a Cubs hat in their Twitter avatar, and a Cubs flag in their banner photo.
https://twitter.com/PaulMBanks/status/794940451786780672
Cubs fans are of course very familiar with this drill, as they just went through it when the team signed closer Aroldis Chapman, a player with a troubled history of domestic abuse.
MLB once banned the relief pitcher for 30 games as a result of “Chapman’s use of the firearm and its effect on his partner.”
This is all happening at a time when so many Cubs fans must deal with the emotional roller coaster of celebrating the World Series victory parade and rally on Friday November 5th; then being devastated by a Trump electoral victory on Tuesday November 8th.
While Jake Arrieta is riding high in life right now he should be concerned with the self-inflicted damage to his brand.
There will likely be no more light-hearted, fun-loving Jake Arrieta puff pieces by the local media. Or at least there shouldn’t be.
While State Farm did not end their commercial partnership with Arrieta, future potential sponsors will if Arrieta does go full on Curt Schilling in the future with additional despicable remarks.
ya Sandy, that guy is about 40 days past the stupid barrier. Trump won, USA won, we win.
— Curt Schilling (@gehrig38) November 10, 2016
The fact that Schilling, now a talk show host on Breitbart, approves of this message, is a really bad first step.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank.net, partnered with FOX Sports Engage Network. and News Now. Banks, a former writer for the Washington Times, currently contributes regularly to the Chicago Tribune’s RedEye publication and Bold Global.
He also consistently appears on numerous radio and television talk shows all across the country. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram and Sound Cloud.