Jays SS Yunel Escobar was suspended for 3 games yesterday after photographs taken during Saturday’s Rogers Centre contest versus Boston revealed the words, “ ‘Tu Ere Maricon’ written across his eyeblack, commonly translated as “you’re a faggot.” After attending a press conference yesterday to announce Escobar’s punishment and a subsequent, somewhat confusing apology, The Star’s Cathal Kelly calls the Jays handling of the situation, “shameful, dissembling” adding, “we have moved far enough in this debate that it can’t just be brushed aside…it must be brushed aside with a press conference.”
If Escobar would have us believe that he wasn’t thinking “queers” when he wrote this, it would have gone better if he hadn’t pretended he’d only just been handed a Spanish dictionary. It got worse when he began ticking off his bonafides.
“I have friends who are gay. The person who decorates my house is gay. The person who cuts my hair is gay,” said Escobar. “Honestly, they haven’t felt as offended about this.”
That’s possible. How much are you paying them to decorate your house?
This was credulous stuff from someone who is either bright as a box of hammers or a liar. Likely somewhere in between. The ugly truth would have done him far more credit.
On either side of Escobar, literally and figuratively, sat his bosses — the ones who’d cooked up the pre-emptive and flimsy little suspension to get this whole issue in the rearview.
“The salary for those three days will be donated to (gay sports advocates) You Can Play,” Escobar intoned dolefully, as if it were his idea.