“Harassment and discrimination have no place within or around Major League Baseball – we must work together to build an even playing field for all those involved in our beloved game.”
So reads the penultimate line of Major League Baseball’s official harassment policy.
Yet anyone who’s spent time in or around the game, or is familiar with the league’s history, knows that there are often exceptions, especially when it might benefit the on-field product.
The Red Sox made such a choice on Thursday night, when they deployed Matt Dermody to start their series finale in Cleveland. Faced with an injury-ravaged, underperforming pitching staff, they selected his contract from Triple-A Worcester, and opened the floodgates.
Almost exactly two years ago, Dermody tweeted: “#PrideMonth. Homosexuals will not inherit the kingdom of God. They will go to hell. This is not my opinion, but the #Truth. Read 1 Corinthians 6:9. May we all examine our hearts, ask Jesus to forgive us and repent of all our sins. I love you all in Christ Jesus!”
Dermody deleted the tweet days later but it’s preserved for eternity via screenshots posted on Twitter. Likewise for older tweets in which he used racial slurs, and many tweets he ‘Liked’ over the last two years, which include transphobic messaging, advocating for physical discipline of children, and the suggestion that Dr. Anthony Fauci be publicly hanged to death on primetime television.
With Adam Duvall set to be activated from the injured list on Friday, it’s almost guaranteed that Dermody, who’d pitched in exactly two major league games since 2017 before Thursday, won’t remain on the roster for long. It won’t matter though; the damage is already done. It takes a lot to get Red Sox Nation to root against their own, but the team’s tweets for the Dermody roster move and lineup are full of disappointed and angry fans.
Simply put, the Red Sox, who make their home in the first U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage, and who are less than a week away from hosting Pride Night at Fenway Park, are in a debacle of their own making.
They had to be expecting some backlash, though sources and public statements both indicate that the organization was unaware of the full scope of Dermody’s social media activity. Chaim Bloom told MassLive‘s Sean McAdam that the Red Sox became aware of the Pride Month tweet during spring training, and proceeded to have club officials meet with him. It escaped their usual pre-signing background check because he’d already deleted it.
“Knowing that the tweet had been taken down and not knowing anything else, I don’t think you have enough information to make a decision,” the Red Sox chief baseball officer said.
This begs the question, how do their own fans have more information?
Because they looked. Simply typing the pitcher’s full name into the platform’s search bar yields an avalanche of bigotry. One baseball fan tweeted that it only took five minutes to find the content Dermody feels merits Twitter’s heart-shaped ‘Like’ button. Perhaps the Red Sox will consider expanding their screening process now.
They have not issued any kind of official statement, let alone an apology, as the Saitama Seibu Lions of the NPB did in 2021, as Dermody had been on their roster at the time of his Pride Month tweets.
Bloom told MassLive that he’d spoken to Dermody “personally.”
“What he told me was that it really came down to two things,” Bloom said. “One, he didn’t realize that his words would be hurtful and he didn’t want to hurt anybody and when he realized that they were, he took (the post) down.”
Of course, Dermody’s older tweets remain, including one with the hashtag “classic Jew joke” and another in which he uses the N-word.
Alex Cora had harsher words for Alex Verdugo, whom he benched on Thursday for lack of hustle in the previous game, than Dermody. Verdugo’s play was “not acceptable and he knows it,” the manager told reporters.
“As an organization, we made this decision,” Cora told reporters Thursday evening. “As an organization, we’ve done a lot of stuff to educate our players in the subject.
“I don’t know how many organizations, they do it with their employees and their players, you know, as far as like, educating them about being inclusive, and obviously, accepting everybody in the clubhouse and in your working environment.”
The league requires teams conduct annual training regarding discrimination and harassment, but this is mandatory for non-playing staff only. Sources told the Herald what Cora confirmed Thursday evening, that the Red Sox choose to mandate the same training for their major- and minor-league players.
Of course, going above and beyond the league’s conditions holds little water when the tenets aren’t actually upheld.
“Obviously, not too many people agree with the tweet,” Cora continued. “I’m not here to tell him what to say or what to do, but one thing for sure, when you put this uniform (on), obviously, you’re, what we want is to be inclusive.
“I think the clubhouse is a reflection of the world. If you think about it, we’ve got people from different races, different beliefs, not only religious beliefs, but also politics.”
