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      July 29, 2018After His Racist Tweets are Exposed During Baseball’s All-Star Game …William Evans

      What occurs to me, now two decades after I broke
      the earth beneath me leaving second base, is that,
      instead of an insult, I was perhaps a new god, having been
      called something other than my name in a holy trinity
      before, during, and after the game. It might have been
      Groveport, or Lancaster, or any territory Ohio lays claim
      to honestly, every town is different except for what they
      will wield at you. I rounded third base, towards a litany
      of nigger and nigger. How fortunate to have someone
      waiting for you as you return home. How blessed to be
      left to interpret your worshippers because they love you
      enough to name you themselves.

      from Poets Respond

      William Evans

      “Through high school and my early college years, I was a multi-sport athlete, but I was a better baseball player than I was most other things. I learned to love baseball from my father, who ironically loved the game mostly in isolation that a young rural black boy has to. As my parents moved us up economically from neighborhood to monochromatic neighborhood, I found I was the only black baseball player on every baseball team. The fact that I was good probably saved me from being nothing more than a mascot during home games, but it made me an outright target in other school’s fields. The celebration of Josh Haden not only hit me hard because it felt like an outright dismissal of those that his hurtful words and rhetoric affected, but also as a reminder of just how American baseball is and always has been.”

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