Shank aka CHB calls out David Price calling out Eck

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cleanturtle

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Feb 2, 2007
32
@Reverend , I really appreciate that you take the issue seriously and offer an outline of your reasoning. The joke did not strike me as a lynching joke, but I would have had similar questions as @chawson if it had been something like "instead of shooting, why not string him up?" But it wasn't. Instead, it seems (to me) connected to SoSH's fondness for puns, which is awesome. I love the pun runs you guys generate.

I think the critique you give, though, could apply to both sides. Much of the response to @chawson seems a little over the top and similarly unproductive. I think he deserves some level of credit for actually asking the writer what his intent was. Then, when he was told that no, it wasn't about lynching, he immediately apologized and explained why he had asked the question in the first play. It would seem simple to me to have left it there and go on, and that's why the anger his question generated seems misplaced to me. I would argue that many of those posts also impede communication.
 

Savin Hillbilly

loves the secret sauce
SoSH Member
Jul 10, 2007
18,783
The wrong side of the bridge....
I think the critique you give, though, could apply to both sides. Much of the response to @chawson seems a little over the top and similarly unproductive. I think he deserves some level of credit for actually asking the writer what his intent was. Then, when he was told that no, it wasn't about lynching, he immediately apologized and explained why he had asked the question in the first play. It would seem simple to me to have left it there and go on, and that's why the anger his question generated seems misplaced to me. I would argue that many of those posts also impede communication.
I agree with this. I think on the one hand, it's not unfair to say that chawson's antennae are hyper-attuned, and he's picking up some cues that really aren't there, at least in terms of intent. Yes, the whole "take him out back and shoot him" thing was about "let's hyperbolize the shit out of this Price-is-done-here narrative for some comic relief" and not a coded lynching fantasy.

But....but. One of the unbelievably fucking annoying realities that our legacy of cultural racism has created is that race contextualizes everything whether we like it or not, whether we intended it or not. It's the Zelig who keeps poking his face into the frame. When you make jokes about shooting an annoying black man, no how matter how little the impetus for the jokes had to do with his blackness, it's not the same as making jokes about shooting an annoying white man. It just can't be. The role of reminding people of this is a thankless but necessary one. It makes us uncomfortable, as it should. And sometimes we can't help but say "oh fer chrissake, it was just a joke", and that's fine, as long as we remember that the person who exasperated us by "bringing race into it" was just doing his job, like a meter maid writing a ticket.

chawson, thanks for doing your job...even if Rev is right that your approach could use refinement.
 

Bergs

funky and cold
SoSH Member
Jul 22, 2005
21,613
To clarify, it was NOT a running joke about shooting a guy.

The remark about shooting him was an exaggeration of the post about this being the straw that breaks the camel's back, i.e. him being done. So someone took that point, and piled on exaggerating a bit, specifically invoking an expression that implied that Price was not a good pitcher anymore. This specific form of exaggeration--invoking a related idea that is absurd and everyone knows it (i.e. that Price's talent is depleted)--is a key feature of America humor. See how it works on multiple levels--it both riffs off of the "the team should be done with Price" thing (which is annoying and funny) of the camels' back cliché, but then doubles it up with the absurdity of anyone who follows Price thinking he's no longer good.

In this way, these statements of feigned confusion as to Price's situations and talents allow the poster to play the fool, pretending at dumbness. This allows the other readers to both enjoy the farce while receiving the lesson: Don't be this guy. This sort of interaction has been a feature of humor in the West at least since the Ancient Greeks and perhaps further back--sadly, my studies in this field do not allow me to say if it goes furthur back or what it's lineage in Eastern literature is.

Then, the final line about the tree had nothing to do with the alleged violent nature of the dicussion at all, but was ruminating on why location matters in a cliché. This form of word play allows people to play with concepts and learn more about how they work--many people enjoy this activity in the form of humor. Why ARE the animals always dragged out back to be shot, anyway? (The joke here is that it should be obvious--people don't want to see us shooting animals. Again, the humor lies in someone saying something dumb about an obvious truth.)

Race relations, as evidenced in the very term--like all politics--happens between people. I agree that people often misunderstand or misidentify or even fail to identify serious structural race issues all the time (A significant number who know the term continue to misapprehend what institutional racism really is, for that matter.) and it sucks.

But by the same token, if you do violence to the language of others in your vigilance, you actually impede communication, which is a death knell for your project. Indeed, people in general--many of those being those you wish to reach--will find it alienating. I mean, if you find a thing simply because you are looking for it, well, that's how cops end up jumping to conclusions too--and we know what that has meant to race relations; look hard enough to find the suspicious thing and soon you find yourself firing. And then the wrong people sometimes get hurt. And people get pissed.

Now, the purpose of all this snark is: If you can't (or refuse to) understand how people communicate, you will find your effectiveness in getting what I consider to be the terribly important purposes of your work to be severely limited. Frankly, you are currently making it that much harder for the rest of us on this board who care about this stuff to get others to take it seriously to convince people from dismissing it--an implicit project/discussion that has been going on on this board literally for years.

And I'm not even a little bit kidding.
Jesus, Rev. Way to make the same point as me about a million times more eloquently. Dick!
 

Bergs

funky and cold
SoSH Member
Jul 22, 2005
21,613
chawson, thanks for doing your job...even if Rev is right that your approach could use refinement.
I'm sorry, but this is bullshit. Accusing someone of making a racially charged lynching joke when any English-speaking person with an ability to understand humor (as Rev so eloquently explained) could see that said joke was in the context of an intentionally escalating riff on absurdity (and had nothing to do with lynching except for mentioning a fucking tree in the context of shooting someone) is not "doing your job" ...it's belligerent, shitty posting. One note symphonies fucking suck.

edit: And I say this as someone that genuinely and emphatically believes race is a fundamentally flawed lens through which we evaluate and judge people in 21st century America.

edit #2: structural cleanup....but not in a racist way, I promise.
 
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Bergs

funky and cold
SoSH Member
Jul 22, 2005
21,613
Wait, what? I'd like to know more about this, please.
I, as a (mostly) white person, completely and utterly agree that I like being comfortable. If you can't understand that, than you are obviously a racist. This shit is so easy, why does it seem so hard to grasp?
 

edoug

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
6,007
This is coming full circle back the the first onscreen crush thread. There is an order to things beyond my capacity to comprehend.
Okay, Rev writes good. So he must die. Can't shoot him next to trees. It's racist. If you shoot someone near flowers and trees it's sexist because birds need trees and bees need flowers. The shooting will drive the birds and bees away. Voila you killed sex and thats sexist.
 

Bergs

funky and cold
SoSH Member
Jul 22, 2005
21,613
Okay, Rev writes good. So he must die. Can't shoot him next to trees. It's racist. If you shoot someone near flowers and tress it's sexist because birds need trees and bees need flowers. The shooting will drive the birds and bees away. Voila you killed sex and thats sexist.
Now this guy GETS IT, man!!!!
 

joe dokes

Member
SoSH Member
Jul 18, 2005
30,243
Okay, Rev writes good. So he must die. Can't shoot him next to trees. It's racist. If you shoot someone near flowers and trees it's sexist because birds need trees and bees need flowers. The shooting will drive the birds and bees away. Voila you killed sex and thats sexist.
I throw the ball to who. Whoever it is drops the ball and the guy runs to second. Who picks up the ball and throws it to What. What throws it to I Don't Know. I Don't Know throws it back to Tomorrow, Triple play. Another guy gets up and hits a long fly ball to Because. Why? I don't know! He's on third and I don't give a darn!
 

uncannymanny

Member
SoSH Member
Jan 12, 2007
9,081
I, as a (mostly) white person, completely and utterly agree that I like being comfortable. If you can't understand that, than you are obviously a racist. This shit is so easy, why does it seem so hard to grasp?
Well, shit. We've never met, but I should've assumed you were white since you're here.
 

charlieoscar

Member
Sep 28, 2014
1,339
Per your point about bigotry toward "French-Canadians, Poles, Italians, Jews, etc." - sure, that exists. It's not appropriate to lump that in with black people in the U.S.
I'm sorry but I think bigotry is offensive no matter to whom it is applied. What I wrote was to show that no matter where one was bigotry existed. The history of the human race has shown us that. It does not matter if everyone on this planet were exactly the same height, weight, appearance and unisexual, there would still be some way that bigotry existed, like you lived on the wrong side of the street.

I'm white. I spent eight years in the 1960s decade in the military living and working with with a variety of ethnicities. I was stationed in Mississippi for a time in the mid-60s and I saw the way Blacks were treated. I'm not trying to say that I understood their feelings but when one that I worked with and I walked into a bar, only to have him denied service. I sure didn't stick around to have a beer.

Don't judge all books by their cover.
 

ToucanSam54

New Member
Aug 1, 2015
19
You've got to be more of a professional. I enjoy Eck in the booth and don't want to see him leave. Price needs to show that he is dominant in order to voice an opinion like that.
 

Moviegoer

broken record
Feb 6, 2016
4,889
The utter shitshow this thread has turned into is, in a strange way, completely appropriate to talking about the icy gatorade incident.
 

DeJesus Built My Hotrod

Well-Known Member
Lifetime Member
SoSH Member
Dec 24, 2002
48,209
But....but. One of the unbelievably fucking annoying realities that our legacy of cultural racism has created is that race contextualizes everything whether we like it or not, whether we intended it or not. It's the Zelig who keeps poking his face into the frame. When you make jokes about shooting an annoying black man, no how matter how little the impetus for the jokes had to do with his blackness, it's not the same as making jokes about shooting an annoying white man. It just can't be. The role of reminding people of this is a thankless but necessary one. It makes us uncomfortable, as it should. And sometimes we can't help but say "oh fer chrissake, it was just a joke", and that's fine, as long as we remember that the person who exasperated us by "bringing race into it" was just doing his job, like a meter maid writing a ticket.

chawson, thanks for doing your job...even if Rev is right that your approach could use refinement.
Its sad when we have to be careful in considering context while commenting, especially when this very topic deals with some alleged beef between two grown men who are interacting because they have both played a kids game. However this paragraph nails the reason why its important to do so.

And it sucks because discussing a potentially frayed relationship between a millionaire athlete and his team's color commentary guy - a wealthy ex-athlete himself - generally deserves to be taken less seriously than just about any other topic imaginable.
 

keninten

New Member
Nov 24, 2005
588
Tennessee
Just to put this in perspective. Are we all Red Sox fans because they are from where we are from? Isn`t that how racism starts?
 

Reverend

for king and country
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Jan 20, 2007
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Just to put this in perspective. Are we all Red Sox fans because they are from where we are from? Isn`t that how racism starts?
I'm not sure this thread can handle that much perspective.
 

Reverend

for king and country
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Jan 20, 2007
64,040
Yeah, asking other people if they are racist always makes for a productive conversation, doesn't it?
Especially on a board where it's known that such behavior would be grounds for immediate expulsion.
 

Igosplut

New Member
May 8, 2007
45
Cape Cod MA.
Especially on a board where it's known that such behavior would be grounds for immediate expulsion.
I've been a lurker on this board for ten years now. Many times I've had the urge to ask questions, only to have seen simular other posters get slapped down for lack of proper investigation into what they are asking (I really wanted to ask what if anything was happening with Carson Smith, but figured it would be frowned at as I had not done an in-depth search of all baseball sites). That, and the stated need to understand and apply math equations for metrics. Baseball to me is fun, not work.

Then I come on and see a thread like this thriving. Without getting into even a longer protracted fight over the topic of racism, This isn't why I came here, or I thought would be like this. If this opinion is improper,, just delete the post, or whatever. Just thought some would like the view of a lurker who reads the board daily.
 

Curt S Loew

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Apr 12, 2001
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Shantytown
I've been a lurker on this board for ten years now. Many times I've had the urge to ask questions, only to have seen simular other posters get slapped down for lack of proper investigation into what they are asking (I really wanted to ask what if anything was happening with Carson Smith, but figured it would be frowned at as I had not done an in-depth search of all baseball sites). That, and the stated need to understand and apply math equations for metrics. Baseball to me is fun, not work.

Then I come on and see a thread like this thriving. Without getting into even a longer protracted fight over the topic of racism, This isn't why I came here, or I thought would be like this. If this opinion is improper,, just delete the post, or whatever. Just thought some would like the view of a lurker who reads the board daily.
This opinion is very proper and the reason this thread should at the very least be re-located.
 

Reverend

for king and country
Lifetime Member
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Jan 20, 2007
64,040
This opinion is very proper and the reason this thread should at the very least be re-located.
Well, it is Red Sox related--and if
It is moved, lurkers can't see it.

That may be some of the disconnect here.
 

drbretto

Member
SoSH Member
Apr 10, 2009
12,077
Concord, NH
First the good:
a) He has been a good teammate
b) His triple slash on its surface isn't awful .250/.337/.443

And now everything else:
His OPS plus is 101 and wRC+ is 99 and he is being paid 22 million a year as a clean up hitter at a non-premium defensive position.

He has been replacement level this year and netted about half a win over his tenure and earned 5.6 million despite being paid 66 over his first three seasons.

Part of his lack of production has been due to being banged up. Except he hasn't been DL'd since August of his first season, so we have been stuck with a seemingly declining, well below average, who may or may not ever get to 100%. clean up hitter who needs to play every day.

While he is 7th in WAR among DH's, 4 of those players play the field a lot more than he can, freeing up DH for effective hitters and giving dog tired regulars a rest. He would be 25th among 27 qualified at first base. Were he able to play first base more often, maybe Pedey could have gotten much needed breaks to just DH 3 days a week and get Moreland out of the lineup when he was ice cold.

On top of this, his option will vest for 2019 with enough playing time.

For all the wrath directed at Mitch Moreland, I would argue the one player killing the team the most is Hanley given his spot in the lineup and his inflexible positioning.

Other thoughts?
Hanley is just getting a pass from the fans because he's white.




(Sorry, didn't want to pollute the other thread with my lame joke :p)
 
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