Sports
As MLB Honors Jackie Robinson, Can it Reverse a Trend?
[USA Today]
Brooklyn Dodgers baseball player Jackie Robinson back in 1952. Baseball holds tributes across the country on April 15, Jackie Robinson Day. It is the 67th anniversary marks the end of the game’s racial barrier. (Photo: DG, AP)
Just when we want to believe that times are changing and prejudice is waning, along comes a ferocious reminder like a Manny Pacquiao punch to the jaw.
Sheer racism, exposed in vile letters directed to Hall of Famer Hank Aaron, have poured into the Atlanta Braves offices over the past week.
Yes, it was like 1974 all over again, the year Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, with letters laced with the most hateful epithet known to African Americans.
“Hank Aaron is a scumbag piece of (expletive) (racial slur)” a man named Edward says in an e-mail to the Braves front office obtained by USA TODAY Sports.
Edward invokes the epithet five times in four sentences, closing with, “My old man instilled in my mind from a young age, the only good (racial slur) is a dead (racial slur).”
