OldSchoolSnapper

This. If he tries explaining this it will make things worse.

The rules of democracy don't really apply to a private entity. Especially one like the Brewers that fires talent regularly. They can cut ties with Hader for any reason they want. They can absolutely tell him to delete old stuff or take a hike. Seattle was very open about why they didn't bring Colin Kaepernick in. Democracy keeps Hader out of jail, it doesn't keep him employed.

Sorry, but if someone is going to parse every word from a guy, after just crapping his pants in the biggest game he's ever pitched in when a twitter storm of level 5 is heading right between his eyes, and take issue with the EXACT word he used to apologize is beyond ridiculous... and not worth my time to read any more of his drivel... Travis Sarandos has a far worse twitter history than Josh Hader. The fact that bcb lets him write for them is crazy. Huh??

I've been thinking all along that I don't have enough context to either write Josh off entirely or be ready to immediately move on. I don't even know what that context would look/sound like. If dumb shallow teenage stuff was ultimately behind the ugly tweets, what are the odds Josh is going to remember exactly what was going on the day/night he tweeted "white power lol." (And at the risk of parsing too finely, isn't LOL what kids add when they are joking about something? Not that white power is a smart thing to joke about; I'm just a language nerd, so I notice that stuff.) There isn't much I can add that's new in this thread, but I'll share some of what's been on my mind anyway: - I don't know who would be able to give a perfectly poised answer - about something that has probably not crossed his mind in a while - out of the blue immediately after a high-profile (and arguably crummy) performance. I'm pretty sure I couldn't. - Whoever started the sharing of the ugly tweets must have some kind of axe to grind. Yes, the tweets are ugly. Choosing that evening to share them is its own kind of ugly. (Allegedly photoshopping tweets into the mix is a whole 'nother kind of ugly, and I don't even want to think about the slippery slope that represents.) - Assuming for the moment that Josh is not full of racial/orientation/gender hatred...I feel genuinely bad for him. Talk about a top-to-bottom day. Of the players we have met as season seat holders (all very brief meetings), Josh seemed among the most enthusiastic to interact with fans. Most players are polite, but you can tell they're just doing what they're assigned. Maybe Josh is just a better actor in that way, but he left a better personal impression on me than most players do. That got me interested in rooting for him even before his early 2018 video game-style performance. - I feel worse for the Brewers organization. It is full of people I care about (including some who are personal friends) and fairly or not, it sustained a black eye at a high-profile time. They got through the Braun experience reasonably well, and I'm confident they will find a way to move through this, but I am sad for them that it's necessary. - I hope it does not become an insurmountable clubhouse problem. The players (Josh especially) will have enough to contend with from opponents and their fanbases, as well as possibly parts of their own fanbase. This doesn't mean I think winning games is more important than being good people off the field. This should certainly be a learning experience for both Josh and the Brewers. I hope it also leads to a more measured reaction from us as Brewers fans, the next time unsavory news comes to light about a Cardinal or Cub or any other rival. Finally...kudos to everyone who has kept this thread in pretty decent shape, especially given the hot button topics + emotions they naturally inspire. You're not the only one who felt that way about Josh Hader. https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1019303431222292480 If there's one thing I'm not worried about at all it's the clubhouse. They'll be fine. They might lose a lot of games because they're falling off a cliff, but if we end up saying it's because of this I think that's weak. Cain aced damage control 101 the night this happened.

I was agreeing with the poster I quoted and referring to that article. Referring to the article as idiotic is not allowed? That's a new one, and would seem rather selectively enforced.

Cleveland is in a unique situation. Possibly the 6th best team in the AL but a lock for the playoffs, so it still makes sense in that anything can happen once there and they have a clear path to it.

The nature of MLB and NBA season doesn't lend itself to local reporters confronting coaches and management because of how many games there are. It's a different animal than the NFL, where you have more or less a repetitive weekly schedule with much more limited availability. You can ask a brutal question, get roasted, and then have days to cool off. The national media has way more leverage. If you're getting in Craig Counsell's face every night about a pitching change, that's going to get really old, really fast, and it's going to be next to impossible to do the job. I worked a very long time in media and this is something fans really don't have a grasp on. Nobody has to talk to these reporters. They stop talking to you and you have a big problem on your hands and a pissed off editor. When covering an MLB beat you are walking a 24/7 line between keeping contact open and doing your job.

I dismiss the notion that most athletes are jerks. Maybe it used to be that way, but that's not been my experience meeting hundreds of them. Most of them are just guys. Yeah, you'll meet the entitled prick like you would anywhere else, and I'll concede the field is disproportionately populated with jerks. Since I'm a normal guy and have some tact when deciding when and how to approach them, they are nice to me about 97% of the time. Usually when I witness a rough interaction, the approaching person lacks either tact or timing.

They were good moves, but acquiring players in the winter is like hitting home runs in the third inning. They're good but not decisive. He has yet to show in back to back years that he can finish the job and get the man he wants in the 9th inning with the season on the line. And there's that releasing Scooter Gennett move too. Say what you want about Doug Melvin, but when he set his sights on the playoffs, he got his man. Twice in fact. He has yet to show he can get the man he wants with the season on the line? That's oddly specific criteria. The GM's job is to explore all avenues of acquisition, not jeopardize the franchises for a shiny toy for 1 year. Stearns set his price and didn't budge. That's willpower, frankly the kind an org. like this one needs for sustained success. Sabathia worked out great for us, but the Royals made it to the World Series with our prospects, two of whom were starters, one an absolute cornerstone of their run. Your first sentence is just sports talk gibberish. A move is a move. Trade deadline moves are "decisive." What does that even mean? They're not "decisive" for the teams that make them year after year and go nowhere. You're being super selective and moving the goal line to where you want it.

Fans too often ignore the possibility that the organizations are super high on one of the "throw-ins." A guy may be rated low but the team may feel he's undervalued. I think Baltimore did this right. They got a pretty highly touted guy and then some volume. One of those guys is likely to be a starter. I initially wanted Machado but as it dragged on I thought I was being emotional and the best thing for the team was to stay away. I think we learned how Stearns is different from Melvin. I think DM would've done everything to get him and given up way too much, possibly believing he could woo Machado to stay in Milwaukee.

"Brewers sweeten deal by adding Josh Hader to package. Hader will be going back to the place that made him who he is"!

For people who grew up in WI this may be hard to believe, but I didn't grow up in WI and went to a hispanic high school and racist banter and slang in the halls and locker rooms was commonplace. Sarcastic white power comments and words like cracker and worse were used all the time to "rib" friends and teammates. The stuff said to opponents during games was worse. If I'm being honest, that is what Hader's crap looks like to me. It's the same exact words and inflection. Nobody understood the weight of those words at the time, it was just stupid kids trying to be bad asses or attempt humor. Hader's audience at the time of those Tweets was exactly that. Likely friends and baseball teammates.

At least one of Nottingham's was a movie quote. Can't for sure say about the others, but they all sort of read that way. None of that matters as all N Words are created equal in the Twitter Bill of Rights.

Yes. Every person should have to explain every flash in the pan from high school. I should have to answer for why I lit a flaming bag of dog poo on fire sophomore year or pulling Jenny's bra strap in the hallway in 8th grade. I can't believe there are people who want to go down this road. I can't believe you're trying to compare racism/sexism/homophobia to adam sandler jokes but here we are Here it is. This social media pitchforking movement thats drives me up the wall. You throw around every "ism" word you can get your brain around and context be damned, you've made up your mind. I like how the persona you've seen for years is suddenly moot because you found some Tweets from 6, 7, 8 years ago. When something sophomore pops up, you climb atop your pedestal to let everyone know what a morally pure person you are. In reality, actual racism in 2018 is veiled and much more harmful than a bunch of inflammatory tweets. It's a gay guy denied for a job under false reasoning, or a black man denied a housing application because his landlord doesn't want that type in the building because they're always late on rent. That's the type of thing our society would actually benefit from rallying around and putting a stop to. Instead, we're going to continue with nonsense headline-grabbing crap like this. We'll make up our minds about who Josh Hader is from some stuff he Tweeted in high school and have at it.

thank God mlb has a brain. Unlike the nfl. What did the NFL do to Josh Allen? That stuff came out before the draft, so I don't think they could do much about it.

Yes. Every person should have to explain every flash in the pan from high school. I should have to answer for why I lit a flaming bag of dog poo on fire sophomore year or pulling Jenny's bra strap in the hallway in 8th grade. I can't believe there are people who want to go down this road.

True, but you can't say I'm not suspending you be because you did the moronic thing, but rather because it was moronic to not cover it up. If he gets suspended it is gong to be directly because of tweets he made as a 17 year old seven years ago. Not because he was a moron and didn't delete them. It is hate speech that was visible on a public profile attributed and owned by Josh Hader. He admitted that he made the tweets. It really doesn't matter when he did it with there is a very public paper trail. That's why he'll likely face discipline. Unfortunately there isn't really a statute of limitations when it comes to the court of public opinion. As a Brewer fan, I would hate to see him suspended. Heck, he is arguably the MVP of the team so far. But, in the interest of PR and putting this behind them, it would probably be in the team's best interest to levy some sort of discipline on him. I think more people would find a suspension laughable than a means of accountability. The diversity training stuff is expected and the proper response. At least then it's some form of possibly productive discipline. Sitting him for 5 games which really amounts to 1 game is a silly waste of everyone's time, and again, sets an unrealistic precedent. There's no clear line on what you can suspend a player for then.

I think the expectation that a person go back through their social media profile 10 years and delete anything that might be deemed offensive says more about our culture today than it does about any individual.

Yes it's a reasonable concept, but I'm guessing you are not in a high profile position where people pay to watch you work, millions of people follow the profession you are in very closely, and the media reports on the result of your work. If you are in that position, isn't it reasonable to think you would not wait for Facebook or twitter to remind you of things you said that you may have forgotten about? The point is that I don't remember them. Not until Facebook shows them to me. Zero recollection of them at all. I can't delete stuff when I don't know I said it.

Exactly. As someone with 13,000+ posts on Brewerfan alone and thousands upon thousands of posts on other boards, tweets, Facebook and Myspace posts, I couldn't even begin to guess whether or not I have something out there that could be perceived as offensive. The idea that Hader just knew it was out there ready to ruin his life and didn't bother with it is so ridiculous. A 'tweet' is a very quick and in the moment post and particularly by a teenager likely won't be remembered the next week much less 7 years later. Yea, I get that. But Adam, you mean to tell me you wouldn't remember typing "kkk" and "I hate gays" among other things? He was 17, but people seemed to be WAY more focused on that vs some of the things he said. Young and stupid, so he shouldn't be held accountable at all. (Not saying YOU have said that but others have.) For all of you saying you're glad Twitter wasn't around when you were 17, I agree! But most of that (I hope) would have been stupid (not hateful) things about women, getting drunk, whatever. I doubt many of us would have been tweeting kkk, at least I want to believe that. When you go that far, it's more than just being 17 and stupid. And it's also not automatic that he grew out of it, not everyone grows out of it. If you didn't actually believe it and were saying it to troll a friend in high school, or just farting it out there because you think it's funny at 17, then yes, I believe it is totally believable that you don't remember that years later. The fact it sat there for years, in my opinion, actually lends some credibility to the idea that it was just him being an idiot kid and it wasn't a strongly held belief.

It wouldn't be a suspension for what he did at 17. It would be a suspension for being a moron. Yeah, he was a kid when he wrote that stupid stuff, but apparently he also didn't think it mattered enough to go back and delete those tweets once he was in the public eye. That's the choice he made as an adult, and likely why there will be consequences. Nobody has a clue what was going through his head when he posted that stuff. "White power lol" could stem from beating a black teammate in MLB2k12. His high school was 50% black, and I heard the same kind of interracial ribbing in high school locker rooms. Yes, KKK references and the like. Doesn't make it any less idiotic to put it on the Internet. But there's context here. In 2011 the people reading those Tweets were his high school teammates and friends. It's a reasonable concept that he has no recollection of some moronic Tweets from high school when he wasn't on the world's stage. FB shares memories with me that make me cringe and I delete them. Rambling of crap I can't believe I put out for others to see in 2008, 2009. Homophobic sentiment is also rampant in high school sports. It still is today. Hader's stuff doesn't even scratch the surface of things I heard from opposing players across the line of scrimmage, which bothered me then since I have a gay brother, but the social pressure makes one not want to speak up about it. I don't want this to sound like any kind of excuse for him, it's just that this kind of practice takes away all context and when we start trying to assign character based on this kind of stuff, I can't take that seriously. I have no idea who Josh Hader is based on this. It bothers me that some Twitter warriors KNOW who he is, their opinion somehow more valid than Jeremy Jeffress's. That's a joke.

This concept that I've seen on the blogosophere/Twitterverse that he let it stay out there because he still believes it today is so asinine. I can't comprehend that amount of silliness.

Braun was a regular, outspoken player who won an MVP that a LOT of people didn't like prior to him even getting busted. He's married to a lingerie model and made a name for himself being a cocky playboy. He was busted for something that made him better on the field - he cheated at the game. In baseball that's much more egregious than this. We (Brewers fans) have a bias in assessing how big of a deal this is. If I'm on ESPN.com this morning and see this story about an Astros reliever I've barely heard of, I maybe read the blurb and then go get my coffee. I just don't think this has serious staying power. I actually had to look up who mocked Darvish in the World Series because I couldn't remember who it was.

Maybe, I don't see this sticking that long. Locally it will have legs, but I think this is buried on a national level in a couple of days. He isn't a big enough star for it to stick like that. He's a relief pitcher without even the branding of being a "closer." Loads of people never heard of the guy until yesterday. I don't think people will be booing him two years from now. I just don't think he has that kind of hold. The rest of the season, for sure, but I think it's fairly short-lived.

No, it's not all about destroying people. It's about a person saying some really hateful things and being held accountable for it. It's not a witch hunt, he said these things. And throughout his professional career as an adult knew that stuff was out there and wasn't bothered by it enough to get rid of it. I agree there's a difference between saying it when you're 17 vs 23. But from many of the posts I've seen, it sounds like people dismiss it completely because he was 17. I don't. As I said earlier, all we can do is hope he really has changed- for his own sake. Dude. He wasn't bothered by it because he most likely forgot it was even there, and never gave it the time of day. You make it sound like he prepared some statement at 17 and gave it serious consideration. It was a fart in his head that he emptied into the digital world, because that is what stupid teenagers do in 2011. It was probably a funny thing to say to him. No, I don't think he remembered or gave much thought, as a 24 y/o man playing all-star quality baseball, to his digital diarrhea from high school. Every now and then my Facebook memory shows something from college that makes me cringe and I delete it. This is so over the top.