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What Had Happened Was

What Had Happened Was: 6/2/16

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    Andy Green
    San Diego Padres manager Andy Green walks back to the dugout after a pitching change during a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners, Tuesday, May 31, 2016, in Seattle. The Mariners beat the Padres 16-4. AP Photo/Ted S. Warren
    By Ryan Cortes Rhiannon Walker Kofie Yeboah

    GAME. BLOUSES.

    If you haven’t been paying attention to baseball this season (and perhaps even if you have), you may have missed the dumpster fire that is the San Diego Padres, who are stuck in last place in the National League West. Only three teams in MLB have fewer wins than the Padres’ 21. This led the team’s highest executive — chairman Ron Fowler— to appear in a radio interview yesterday in which he essentially doused the entire team in gasoline, lit the match and then dabbed on ’em.

    “It’s been embarrassing. I don’t know how else to put it,” Fowler said on Mighty 1090 AM on Wednesday. “Our performance on the road trip, 1-7, was pathetic … I’m a very competitive individual. I think I’ve won a lot more than lost in my life. This baseball experience has been very frustrating, very embarrassing.”

    “It’s on the player, but the organization has to accept responsibility for probably having the wrong players,” Fowler continued. “We don’t have a team out there right now that is competing effectively. We’re doing everything we can going into the draft and looking at international signings to get some guys who can get us there.”

    He went on to call his own team “miserable failures” and even went after his own $75 million pitcher James Shields, who allowed 10 runs on Tuesday before the second inning ended:

    “To have a starter like [James] Shields perform as poorly as he did yesterday is an embarrassment to the team, an embarrassment to him,” Fowler said.

    Yooooo!

    On the one hand, it’s sort of amusing to hear this kind of blistering honesty in sports, even if it only serves the executive’s anger and doesn’t, you know, actually improve the team. On the other hand, though, holy hell, imagine if a player came out and said this about a management group that was failing him. Imagine if the Cleveland Cavaliers’ LeBron James, still stuck ringless in Cleveland in 2009, appeared in a radio interview like a professional wrestler and called team owner Dan Gilbert a “miserable failure” and said that it was “embarrassing” and “pathetic” what the team management assembled around him. He would get scorched for disrespecting his boss, for not falling in line. A lesser player than James might even get suspended for such a statement.

    But big bad Ron Fowler in management? This will be soon forgotten. Should it, though?

    SOCIAL STATUS

    Yo, Steph, you trying to take that UberPool tonight? Hit us up.

    BLESSINGS!

    On the new Pusha T joint with Jay Z — Drug Dealers Anonymous — there is a brief sound bite featuring commentator Tomi Lahren of TheBlaze TV. “Your husband was a drug dealer, for 14 years he sold crack cocaine,” the clip says before Jay Z spits. Well, Lahren unleashed a handful of tweets in response:

     

    BAIL-OR

    Oh Baylor, how you continue to, what’s the word? I can’t say disappoint, so let’s go with stun.

    It is unbelievable how Baylor continues to, yes, stun with its shortsightedness and news dumps in the aftermath of the Pepper Hamilton report, which reviewed the school’s response to sexual assault. It’s not enough to fail multiple women attacked by members of the football team when reported to the school, police and others seeking help. Nor enough to move Kenneth Starr from president to chancellor, until his recent final decision to resign “as a matter of conscience.”

    Now, the school won’t allow high school signees to get out of their letters of intent, even though, as the school has said repeatedly, everything they do is for the kids. Right.

    Well, is it possible that these kids and their families want nothing to do with the institution because of the widespread issues surrounding this climate of alleged sexual abuse? Maybe these kids don’t want to be associated with something that stands at the opposite end of their moral spectrums and, maybe, for such a serious issue, Baylor should try to do the right thing.

    FOR THE CULTURE

    TOP THREE TWEETS

    Every morning we’ll hit you here with the best of what we saw on social media the previous night. Why? Why not?

    1. LET’S NOT GO THERE

    2. YOU CAME, UNSENT FOR

    https://twitter.com/D2_Derpinator/status/738063009554309120

    3. YES

     

    #ICYMI

    Michael Eric Dyson dove into more than just your standard light-skinned vs. dark-skinned debate in the first of two consecutive pieces on NBA MVP Stephen Curry. Colorism, at its core, holds back African-Americans and creates assumptions not necessarily based in fact:

    Blacks have often internalized in our minds and cultures the vicious stereotypes associated with skin color. We have often circulated harmful beliefs about ourselves that are tied to skin tone: deferring to some blacks because their skin is lighter, demonizing other blacks because their shade is darker.

    Check out part two today.

    PICTURE PERFECT

    Ryan Cortes is a staff writer for The Undefeated. Lemon pepper his wings.

    Rhiannon Walker is an associate editor at The Undefeated. She is a drinker of Sassy Cow Creamery chocolate milk, an owner of an extensive Disney VHS collection, and she might have a heart attack if Frank Ocean doesn't drop his second album.

    Kofie Yeboah asks for Sweet Tea at every restaurant and recites approximately 2.5 Spongebob lines per hour.

    This Story Tagged: MLB What Had Happened Was Baylor Bears NBA 2016 NBA Playoffs