Max Kepler and the Cost of Silence

Pathetic.  Compelling people to have group think is the worst possible reaction to this (unless it is to use Chris Cuomo as the source of any idea).

The police force protect this nation.  The Police Chief of the City of Minneapois is an African American.  Is he an evil racist?  Several of the commanders of departments are African American?  Are they racists?

The true fact is, the racial element in these matters are way overblown.  Police often overreact to the situation and they should be held accountable. The violence and crime in these areas are beyond your comprehension.  It is mostly black on black, minority on minority crimes.  This overreaction will hurt these areas and they may never recover just like Detroit, LA, Newark and other cities that have had such levels of riot.

Stick to baseball.  That is my recommendation for this site.  

Come on now. This is a baseball site the last time I checked. We are continually bombarded by what is going on in the news everytime we turn around. We should have someplace to go to where only one thing matters....baseball. No politics, no religion, no anything. Just baseball. Thats it.

On another similar thread there was a moderator's note stating that there exists another forum for discussion of non-baseball-related topics. I humbly suggest that this thread should be moved to that forum.

I recall a TD article earlier this year that mentioned Fernando Romero's visa problems about which I commented only to be admonished by a mod that TD doesn't do politics.  Clearly, TD does when it suits a few.  Move this to a politics forum.

I'm glad Kepler doesn't do public politics.  Social media are putrid places to spend one's time (unless it's limited to baseball, right?)  That's one of the incredible number of choices we have in this country.  That doesn't mean Max is unfeeling about the loss of life.  Let's not confuse politics or political expressions with one's capacity for empathy.

Let's also not confuse matters further by ignoring the aftermath.  People have a right to protest.  No one has a right to damage another's property or take another life in the aftermath of a murder.  One may be outraged, but remain respectful.  And exercising one's right to be quiet should offend no one.

A society gets the government it deserves.  I don't live in Minnesota, but make it there once a year to watch a Twins' series, last year with Cleveland.  If there was something wrong with the police, mayor, DA, AG or governor last September it wasn't apparent.  But, state and local government's response to Floyd's murder has been awful.  (And Minnesota's politicians' response to the Covid-19 has been equally pathetic---where's the TD outrage to the fact that ~75% of Minnesota's Covid-19 related deaths have been in its nursing homes?  Negligence?  Manslaughter?) Fix government by all means, exercise your 1st Amendment rights, but don't use a baseball forum to cast a shadow on a athlete for exercising their right to refrain from making public politic comments.

What a diaper load of feel-good political correctness.  Always enjoyed this blog, not only because it was about the Minnesota Twins, but it was an escape from the political world. This ruins it. Don't they realize that about half the country disagrees, no matter what your political view are? There are plenty of other social media options if we want to debate politics.

To Nick and the other contributors, please stick to sports. Throwing Max under the bus when you have no means of knowing what he is thinking or means by a social media post is 100% unacceptable. Burning down cities is not acceptable and will only worsen relationships. If you want to shame athletes for social media posts on here, that is your right, but I will not come here to read that. I will not touch the issue on here or any other sports site I follow.

Idiotic but typical would be my response.  There is a Harvard (hardly a conservative bastion) study out showing that blacks are shot LESS by police when you factor out the geographics, etc.  (ex: the study considers the fact that more hispanics get shot in hispanic neigborhoods.)  This study does not support the "narrative" that cops are out to get black guys.... so you won't hear it on CNN.   Now there certainly can be and IS racism exhibited by small populations of ALL races, but what has happened over the last week is directly related to the way the media covers these events.  CNN is making huge profits over this event.....which is the reason they continue to fuel the fire. 

mlhouse nailed it:

"The true fact is, the racial element in these matters are way overblown.Police often overreact to the situation and they should be held accountable. The violence and crime in these areas are beyond your comprehension.It is mostly black on black, minority on minority crimes.This overreaction will hurt these areas and they may never recover just like Detroit, LA, Newark and other cities that have had such levels of riot."

Well, Twins Daily has had a nice run.

I watch baseball, and hang out at Twins Daily, because I get enough political nonsense elsewhere.

This isn't needed here, because there is enough politics on other sites throughout the web.

On another similar thread there was a moderator's note stating that there exists another forum for discussion of non-baseball-related topics. I humbly suggest that this thread should be moved to that forum.

Yeah, God forbid you think about the rest of the world for a second. Grow up.

So when I was fresh out of college, I got my first sports writing gig as the Sports Editor at a small, local weekly paper in the horsey suburbs of Orlando, Florida.

It was 1999, I was 24 years old and I thought I'd hit the big time. It just so happened that my first week on the job, there was a big MLB dust-up regarding the umpire strike. I was young, watched ESPN all the time, and I figured it would be great for me to write a full-page opinion piece for the paper about this topic. After all, I was a big time sports writer now! I wanted my voice to be heard alongside the big name reporters and networks.

As you can probably guess, absolutely nobody who read the local newspaper gave a rat's behind about my opinion. And my publisher chewed me out. Why? Because that was a national story and I was supposed to be reporting on hyper-local topics, like the local swim meets and park board meetings. If our readers wanted to read national news stories, they'd buy the USA Today and turn on the network news.

I think you get where I'm going here, Nick: there are a million places we can go online to fight/squabble/preach/complain about the situation going on in Minneapolis and around the country. I'm not saying you don't have a right to voice your opinions here - it's your site, your choice, and in some ways the whole point of this topic is to make yourself heard. That said, we can find other places to go down this wormhole.

Most of us come here to talk Twins, to talk baseball. And we are very loyal to this site because we LOVE the Twins discussion topics here. We have a very diverse set of political opinions here, but the cool thing is that we don't get into that on TD. We can all be on the same team - when we fight, it's about Eddie Rosario and where he should hit in the batting order, rather than about political stuff, which can run deep and hit some toxic levels on all sides.

Just some food for thought.

No Nick, our country is NOT broken.  No Nick, Max Kepler is NOT a racist.  No Nick, Chris Cuomo is a poor example to use.  He's the epitome of "do as I say, not as I do."

I don't agree with a single thing your post stated.  I much prefer your baseball opinions.  You guys at TD opened Pandora's Box with this attack,  and make no mistake fellow TD readers, this was an ATTACK on Max Kepler.  A better target would have been the far left anarchist group ANTIFA.  THEY are who are fueling everything bad up in the Twin Cities and across the country now.  The bottom line is that ALL LIVES MATTER.  Anything less is an obscenity.  

If I want to read or talk politics....I go elsewhere. Get this crap out off this site!

There is no question this has exposed something deeply wrong in this police department. There were multiple upon multiple incidents prior with him - and for the other cops to stand still and silent - big personnel problems in this police force.

There is no question this has exposed the anarchists and race hustlers, who are using this awful police brutality incident to further their political agenda. 

It is racism - and it is politics. And it all belongs somewhere else outside this forum in my opinion. And I'll give Max the benefit of the doubt, as I'm sure Byron will.

Another media source that just doesn’t understand that not all whites and police are racist, not all blacks are criminals and yes, it IS possible to support law enforcement while condemning the horrible actions of bad cops.  What’s next, the defense of the people who destroyed businesses that employed and in some cases, were owned by people of color, the very people these “protesters” supposedly were trying to help?  If, I want to get lectured about how evil white people and law enforcement professionals are, I can get that many other places, not a forum where I thought the topic was a baseball team.

What a pathetic piece. Keep your political opinions to yourself. The problem is not silence, it'staking advantage of your position on this website by using it as a bully pulpit to spew your views on what's wrong with America. I'd put your views at the top of the list. Shut up and stick to baseball.

I don’t think trying somebody by social media, hurling accusations and insults, vandalizing strangers’ property and telling people they have to do more is very helpful. I do my best to treat all people with respect. I don’t care about the color of a person’s skin and I don’t jump to conclusions based on race. I’d like to see a thorough and open investigation into George’s death and have people talk about how to improve race relations and have people listen to each other. I believe Kepler’s explanation and up until a couple of years ago I might have made the same innocent mistake. Kepler seems like a quiet, decent, non-controversial guy who never gets in trouble. Maybe we should give him and all other people the benefit of the doubt. We should stand up to injustice when we see it. We should stop the silly social media rants. We shouldn’t make blanket accusations about the police or races. We should treat people with respect. For those of you who say that supporting the police or waiting to judge until a thorough investigation is held, I can’t disagree with you more. Two or more wrongs don’t make a right. The protesting is absolutely spot on if done with some thought. Vandalizing sets us all back, none more so than the property owners whose lives are affected.

Twins Daily “lets” Nick post this article because he’s an owner and all the owners stand united on this issue, which is a humanitarian issue that America has failed at for four centuries.

It doesn’t have to be political unless you make it political. I don’t see why facing the problem that we’ve failed black Americans can or should be a left/right issue unless you make it one.

Of course it's political. That's either a dishonest statement or an incredibly naive one.

If you simply said, George Floyd's death was tragic, that's not political. Anything else you say after that - we need to reform/abolish the police, America is a failure, etc., is political. Talking about "comfortable white people" and "systemic injustice" is political. It was notable that Nick had nothing to say about the wanton destruction caused by criminals in Minneapolis - is opposition to rioting "political"?

However, it is wrong to push a particular viewpoint and then say 'this isn't politics - this is basic humanity. You are evil if you don't see it exactly as I do.' This line is pushed for the sole reason of de-legitimizing other viewpoints. Nick of course is only parroting the line being put out by people like Cuomo; Nick himself added nothing to the discussion other than being 'bitterly disappointed' in one mid-level pro athlete.

People die every day, in a significant number of cases due to the actions of other people. That's been the case for the entirety of human existence. It's believed that deaths from violence are lower than at any previous time in history, but even so, they are too high.

Deaths from police brutality in the US are an extremely small portion of overall violent deaths. Attacking the police across the board for such incidents actually makes them more likely to occur in the first place, because fewer people will want to join, weakening the applicant pool, in addition to other factors that limit police effectiveness.

The Freddie Gray case in Baltimore was tragic. The response - a weakened police force - has resulted in scores of additional murders, if not hundreds. Do those people not count? They were overwhelmingly minorities, some of them children. Yet there is complete silence about them.

This selective outrage is morally indefensible, and 100% political. 

Like many of you, I read Twins Daily for its baseball content. However, I am very impressed and thankful that Nick Nelson posted this thoughtful article. For all of the commentators posting some version of "shut up and dribble," you need to realize that sports is not played in vacuum. The majority of professional athletes are people of color and are deeply affected by police brutality and white supremacy. White people (I am one) need to have empathy and try to understand the fear and rage that come with the real possibility of being murdered solely based upon your skin color. Having empathy is not (or should not be) political. Kepler's actions lacked this empathy and it is impossible to not to lose respect for him. I have never posted in the comments because they often devolve into hot take style negativity that I don't what to be a part of, however I felt it necessary to do so.