The Boston Red Sox showed they have no tolerance for racism and homophobia this past Sunday when they released prospect Brett Netzer, who’d been on their minor league roster since 2019. At issue was Netzer’s “string of tweets that were anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic and transphobic. Multiple messages were aimed at Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom, who is Jewish,” according to CBS Sports, which reports:
When called racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic by users on Twitter as a response to his tweets, Netzer, 25, wrote that he agreed he was racist and homophobic, but did not agree he was anti-Semitic.
“I am a racist. I do sometimes make assumptions based on a person’s race/ethnicity/culture. Glad that is out of the way,” he wrote, according to CBS News.
In other tweets, he wrote that black people should “go back to their roots and start to re-establish their true black culture” and equated closeted transgender people to being rapists.
Netzer was on the restricted list for the 2021 season for undisclosed reasons and he did not play in 2020 due to the minor league season’s cancelation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Writes Alex Reimer for Outsports:
While it’s easy to write off Netzer as an irrelevant clown, his bigoted viewpoints aren’t spouted in isolation. They can still reach and impact LGBTQ people. …
In recent months, we’ve seen a couple of stories about rampant homophobia among young male athletes at elite schools and affluent towns. An out former wrestler at Princeton wrote an op-ed about the culture of hate on the wrestling team; high school hockey players in a wealthy Massachusetts suburb instituted razing rituals such as “Gay Tuesdays” and “Hard R Fridays.”
People still act this way. But importantly, they’re not gaining support in the sports world, even in staunchly conservative communities. For example, we reported last year about a private Catholic high school that rehired a gay coach following outcry from students and parents.
Last fall, pro baseball player Bryan Ruby came out, so other LGBTQ players don’t have to hide their identities in a traditionally unprogressive sport.
As an organization, the Red Sox are staunch advocates of LGBTQ Pride. Somebody like Netzer can’t represent the franchise in any capacity.
Read Alex Reimer’s complete story in Outsports here.
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