Apparently those discussions on race relations after the Gary Zimmerman verdict that were supposed to take place haven't happened yet.
Oakland Athletics outfielder Yoenis Cespedes won Monday night's Home Run Derby during All-Star Week at Citi Field in Flusing, N.Y. The 27-year-old Cuban who defected in 2011 to the Dominican Republic to become a Major League Baseball player, hit nine home runs in the derby final to beat Washington Nationals outfield Bryce Harper.
Cespedes hit 32 home runs total during the three rounds.
After the victory, Cespedes received the Home Run Derby Trophy and then did an interview with ESPN's bilingual baseball reporter Pedro Gomez. Gomez asked some questions, first in English for the audience to hear, then in Spanish to Cespedes.
Cespedes answered in Spanish, and Gomez translated his comments to English for the fans and the nationally televised audience.
The interview being conducted in Spanish didn't sit well with a lot of fans with Twitter accounts, according to Deadspin.com.
From Mike Reed:
"This is America's past time speak English or go back to jibberjabber land"
From someone with the Twitter account name of "massiekur:"
"Like what're you doing ? This is AMERICA . Speak English . #HRDerby2013 #onenation #undergod #indivisible #withliberty #andjustice #forall"
From Scott Yelle:
"These damn Cuban baseball players need to learn to speak English. THIS IS AMERICA #HomeRunDerby"
And from Ryan Johnson:
"You know whites are almost out of professional sports all together when ESPN has to do interviews at the home run derby in spanish"
Several of the tweets used vulgarities, according to the Deadspin.com report, and some of them even used ethnic slurs.
© Copyright 2024 Sports World News, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.