Manny Machado doesn’t need defending — but Ken Rosenthal should do some soul searching

Some thoughts on egregious takes in The Athletic

The tsk tsking came early and frequently after the Padres put the screws to the Dodgers on Tuesday night. They evened up the five-game series with one win apiece at Chavez Ravine clubbing six home runs en route to a 10-2 victory.

To be clear, there were a lot of things to complain about. Dodgers fans were throwing baseballs and debris at the Padres outfielders. It delayed the start of the bottom of the seventh inning by at least seven or eight minutes — which is pretty substantial when Yu Darvish is sitting on 69 pitches and a rare chance for a postseason complete game. Dodgers pitcher Jack Flaherty was throwing baseballs at Fernando Tatis Jr., which definitely got the Padres dander up.

But the next morning those stories somehow avoided the wrath of one of the most prominent baseball writers in America, Ken Rosenthal. Rosenthal decided amidst this drama between two teams who don’t exactly like each other, the thing to write about was Manny Machado casually throwing a ball towards the Dodgers’ dugout.

And to be clear, this story was a nothing burger almost immediately because Padres beat writer (and just a generally excellent follow, Annie Heilbrunn) found the video of the alleged incident…and, um, judge for yourself:

Which honestly just makes it stunning that given those facts one of the greatest baseball writers of our time decided the hill to die on with this incident was this:

The Dodgers submitted video for Major League Baseball to review, but no one should hold their breath waiting for disciplinary action. Machado’s throw did not hit anyone, giving him plausible deniability. The bigger question, perhaps, is whether the Dodgers will retaliate against Machado in Game 3 on Tuesday night. At the Padres’ home park. Where fans agitated by the indefensible conduct of some of their Dodgers counterparts Sunday night are certain to be in a frenzy. Good luck with that.

At the moment, one thing seems clear: The Padres aren’t just a heck of a team. They’re also inside the Dodgers’ heads. Teams often take on the personalities of their leaders. As the Padres’ leader, Machado is entirely willing to engage in conduct some might consider unbecoming, and he’s unapologetic about it. The best way for the Dodgers to deal with him is to beat him. And that will be easier said than done.

Machado is far from the Padres’ only irritant. Fernando Tatis Jr. is a smiling, dancing peacock. Jurickson Profar is the kid who pulls the fire alarm at school and then asks, “Who, me?”

In case anyone missed the punchline here, yes, Ken Rosenthal wrote these words. Somehow both The New York Times and The Athletic decided they were totally appropriate for the situation you can watch in the Annie Heilbrunn video above — a video that is noticeably absent from the aforementioned piece:

Machado is far from the Padres’ only irritant. Fernando Tatis Jr. is a smiling, dancing peacock. Jurickson Profar is the kid who pulls the fire alarm at school and then asks, “Who, me?”

A Ph.D. candidate could write their doctoral thesis on the bias and racial coding in these words. The fact that all three players who are insulted so disdainfully in merely 33 words are Black and Brown should be lost on no one. Machado goes from team leader to “irritant” on the basis of an unsubstantiated claim, a fiction about a throw that harkens back to every bad thing baseball fans have ever been told about Manny Machado.

And look, you don’t have to like him. As a Red Sox fan who lived in Boston from 2007-14, Dustin Pedroia was my favorite player. There was something about the scrappy second baseman that edged out even David Ortiz for me (I know, I too am surprised by this development). The discourse around Machado and the interruption of a Hall of Fame trajectory for Pedroia was terrible, awful and an easy way to paint Machado as a villain.

There were also all the rumors Rosenthal rehashes at length. Dirty slides. Dirty moves to step on the feet of first basemen. Not hustling. You don’t need me to rehash all of this for you. It’s enough to lead anyone to believe the accusations leveled against him.

All of above can be true and it’s still incredulous that the action inspiring Rosenthal to write this line:

Machado is far from the Padres’ only irritant. Fernando Tatis Jr. is a smiling, dancing peacock. Jurickson Profar is the kid who pulls the fire alarm at school and then asks, “Who, me?”

… was this stunningly routine throw towards the dugout that Dave Roberts didn’t even register immediately:

To be clear, Machado deserves more from a sport where he’s putting up borderline Hall of Fame numbers through his age-32 season. But like, let’s presume, for the sake of argument, that the throw was terrible. What even are these statements about Tatis and Profar? Is there anyone who honestly can’t see the how problematic it is to refer to Tatis as a “smiling, dancing peacock” or the unabashed implicit bias in referring to left fielder Jurickson Profar pulling off one of the greatest home run robbery dekes of all-time [VIDEO] as “the kid who pulls the fire alarm at school?”

Incidentally, now seems like a great time to bring in some relevant knowledge from my day job. According to Wikipedia, the Fordham Institute is an ideologically conservative education think tank and in 2014 they published this in a piece about discipline in schools, emphasis mine:

We all know that there are real problems with the ways that discipline is meted out in some American schools today. You can find campuses where huge numbers of students are suspended or expelled, particularly African American and Latino teenagers, mostly boys. A few years later, those young people are likely to end up in America’s bloated prison system, causing all manner of societal suffering along the way, not to mention blighting their own lives. “Zero tolerance” policies—removing administrator discretion and treating all offenses as equally injurious—have arguably made things worse.

I whole-heartedly support efforts to improve the ways that schools handle these issues; tips and training on creating a positive school culture and reducing suspensions and expulsions are welcome. Nor do I doubt that some of America’s 100,000-plus schools discriminate against minority children. I’ve heard Russlynn Ali, former assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, talk about the district where a black Kindergartener gets suspended for pulling a fire alarm while a white tenth grader does the same thing and gets off with a warning. That’s wrong, and I’m grateful that students who face such discriminatory actions can file complaints with the Office of Civil Rights.

We live in a world where Pete Alonso hits a home run and celebrates (AS HE SHOULD) with a bat flip to the moon:

Meanwhile Ken Rosenthal laments Jurickson Profar privileging all of us with one of the best fake out home run robberies of all time with an analogy to a practice any teacher worth their salt knows is deployed in a discriminating way. Honestly, what are we even doing here?

These are not children pulling a fire alarm who need a wrist slap from Rosenthal or anyone else. These are grown men, having fun, because they have the greatest job in the history of the world and we should let them have fun playing a game because it’s maximizing joy for all of us.

If Ken Rosenthal wrote this piece before he saw video of the Machado throw to the dugout based solely on the word of Dodgers’ players and coaches stung by a night where they gave up six home runs at home, he should be embarrassed by that decision. If he wrote this piece after seeing that video, he should question his own bias in reporting about baseball.

You’re already firing up your comments so let me be clear: I said what I said.

Trying to lean into the “Sinister Sling” of Manny Machado after a night where Dodgers fans and players were the only individuals doing anything that would endanger actual MLB players is reprehensible. It feeds into the worst inclinations of fear in our society. The type that results in five-year old Black and Brown boys being suspended for pulling a fire alarm while their tenth grade counterparts of another race skate with a warning. It has no place in the New York Times or Major League Baseball. Someone owes someone an apology after all of this, but that someone is most certainly not Manny Machado.