Baltimore Orioles star Adam Jones is used to being on the receiving end of heckles from the crowd, when he is roaming center field in the stadium of one of the O's rivals. But he has never in his 12-year-career been subject to the taunts that came his way while visiting Fenway Park for their game against the Boston Red Sox on Monday, May 1. According to Jones, the behavior exhibited by some fans was something akin to what gets exposed in a Jackie Robinson documentary.
“A disrespectful fan threw a bag of peanuts at me,’’ Jones said, following the Orioles' 5-2 victory over their home team opponents. “I was called the N-word a handful of times tonight. Thanks. Pretty awesome.’’ Jones attests to having experienced bigotry at Fenway in the past, but says that the racial hostility was taken to new heights on Monday, pointing out that he had been informed that there were around 60 ejections from the ballpark that night. "It is what it is, right. I just go out and play baseball. It’s unfortunate that people need to resort to those type of epithets to degrade another human being. I’m trying to make a living for myself and for my family," he said.
Jones has become increasingly vocal about race relations in baseball, ever since his remarks last summer, on the lack of protests from Black players having to do with what he perceives to be baseball being a "white man's sport." As one of the game's elite African American players, in a time when the percentage of African Americans that make up MLB rosters has dwindled, Jones took part as one of the spokespersons who represented Jackie Robinson during the recent celebrations to honor the 70th anniversary of him breaking baseball's color barrier. In hindsight of what has now gone down in Boston, he says the league still has a ways to go in terms of it's efforts to weed out the remnants of racism in the culture of the game, and he is calling for action.
"What they need to do is that instead of kicking them out of the stadium, they need to fine them 10 grand, 20 grand, 30 grand. Something that really hurts somebody. Make them pay in full. And if they don’t, take it out of their check," he says. “Things like that need to be handled a little more properly, in my opinion.’’
Source: usatoday.com
