Max Kepler and the Cost of Silence

This is one of the biggest Minnesota news stories of my lifetime (born 1978). Max Kepler put on a Blue Lives Matter mask and made national news. He then made a pithy, half-hearted apology. While I do understand that he is a very young man and was raised in Germany, he is still a public figure and a Twins player. How could a Twins website not cover it? 

 

As far as solutions are concerned, would you want Nick Nelson to cite studies about the value of mandatory police training in de-escalation techniques, awareness of white privilege and policy changes regarding the demilitarization of police (should our tax money pay for local police to have tanks and military weapons?) and immediate suspension of officers accused of policy brutality (Chauvin had 17 such accusations)?All of these measures have and are being studied and are working where they are being implemented. Do they belong in an article about Max Kepler? I'm not so sure. It certainly would have been a lot longer. Would the "shut up and dribble" crowd have read it? I have my doubts.

It's a stretch to say that Nick was just "covering" the story. It was an opinion piece. He gave his opinion on both Kepler and the "systemic injustice" in the US. He gave a general call to action. He *could* have written a straight news piece, and should have done so given his inability to write an effective opinion piece. 

I did leave it vague intentionally so as to keep politics out as best as possible. I presume Nick Nelson was trying to do the same. To remain vague but a bit more descriptive, if people want this to change, they are going to need to stop sending people to Washington they know will not prioritize this. This is the sacrifice I refer to. Neither party is immune to giving lip service and no substance to this topic.

The issue is political, period. It is deceitful to pretend otherwise. Just look at what you're saying - people need to vote. You can't separate the issue from politics.

"Politics" isn't a dirty word. The owners of this site have a right to take political positions. I'm fine with people expressing their honest views. It is wrong however to push political views and then claim to be stating universal truths that cannot be disputed . . . it's again within the rights of the site owners to do so, but it is dishonest and disrespectful to forum members.

I read Twins Daily because it is about baseball, I read the Star Tribune and watch the news on TV and listen to it on the radio. I would prefer to see "Twins Daily stay in their own lane."

No one asked Kepler for a stance, until he put on a non-standard colored (I'm being charitable) American flag.

 

I mean, I couldn't tell you from memory that the German flag is black, red, and gold. But I do think if I was handed a covid-19 facemask that kind of looked like their flag, I'd inquire of the person giving it to me what it meant, before posting a photo of myself in it. And I'm not even a public figure. Also, an American flag's design is more distinctive than the mass of tri-color flags out there, so the oddity of that mask should have tripped a warning signal for Max.

 

Again, the most charitable interpretation of that photo was Max did something dumb. He should be allowed to explain himself, when it was pointed out. And he was, and did. That's not being "forced to have a stance on every single issue."
 

But it clearly turned into him having a stance on the issue. Just because he wore a mask with a blue stripe does not mean that he thought what Derek Chuavin did was right, and I know you're smart enough to figure that out. You can both support police and the protestors at the same time. We need police in our life, but we also need both. It's possible for him to support both, and I am sure that he does. Stop taking things out of context to push an agenda out there. 

No one did any such thing.

You did though, a co-owner wrote an entire article talking about how Kepler needs to be better and how wrong he was. He did a thing he didn't know was wrong (whether you think he should've double checked or not is a moot point), removed the post after being informed, and released a statement about how he was sorry and stood with the protestors. What more do you want him to do? He is a German-American baseball player. He doesn't need to have a stance on American politics whether you want him to or not. He is a baseball player, not a politician. 

He took one, when he put on a funny-colored US flag for a facemask.

 

Again, the German flag is so different from the US one, the analogy likewise has to be different: if someone hands me a black-gold-red flag with something additional drawn on it (I don't care what - Mickey Mouse, a pine tree, a heart), I'd better inquire with whoever gave it to me, and probably fact-check it somehow as well, before putting it on, if I'm in the public eye. If I ignore common sense and wear it, and get told later that it represents something I never heard of, that's not bad luck on my part.

Okay, but when did him supporting police turn in to supporting Derek Chauvin? It didn't. The article is out of context. It doesn't mean that he is all of a sudden supporting killing POC because he wore a police mask. Again, it is possible to support both sides. Without police we would not have a functioning society, as seen the last few days. 

I have not been on the site all weekend, and missed the Kepler thing until now.  I have talked and written so much over the last few days as it pertains to the recent events.  I believe Max's post and follow up statement shows why the outrage of people involved is warranted.  The lack of knowledge of the situation raises the biggest issue.  Why turning a blind eye to things because it does not affect you is what leads to the issues in the first place.  I could go on and on and have shed too many tiers and too many personal outrage I feel for what happened to Mr. Floyd and so many others.  However, if anything positive comes from this it will be letting the uneducated know what the issues really are and shed more light on it. 

I strongly believe pages like this should be left to good open debate on sports where we can argue about players and other such things.  Typically I would say other issues should be left to those pages.  However, at times like these some issues need to be spread to all media, to all people, because the fact of the matter is, it could happen to so many people, ourselves, our family, our friends.  I hope this time more happens.  

This article sure got a lot of posters to come out of the shadows to post, eh?

For the stick to sports crowd on here, there’s plenty of opportunity to do so. I’m scrolling through the first page of Front Page articles... Other than the article discussing money between players vs. owners, no other article has generated even a page worth of replies.

This article has almost 5 pages’ worth in 12 hours. Do you really just want to stick to sports? Here’s your opportunity to talk about Taylor Rogers for the 25th time this offseason!

Sure, I get it's a hot topic, but is the goal division and click-bait. If so it is well within the site's right of doing so, but it's so off the norm and not something I would want to be part of going forward.

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.

I see what you did there. 

Face up to any problem you see worthy of your attention.  But don't pull the shaming trick on others (ballplayers or fans) who prefer to express themselves otherwise or not at all.  They have as much right to do so as you have to pontificate or say nothing at all.  This world would be a much better place if the morally-outraged paid more attention to improving themselves first before telling others how to express themselves.

I could specify a dozen current problems that should be faced directly by society.  But, let me just point out two and test your principled commitment to down-the-middle, no-left-right commentary.  Minnesota's AG and his family have quite publicly expressed their support for Antifa.  Today, Antifa tweeted, "f the cities, it's onto the suburbs."  Does it bother you that the state official in charge of enforcing the law expresses support for those who would break the law?

Last (Memorial Day) weekend, Chicago experienced one of its most deadly periods in its history.  The vast majority of deaths were African-Americans.  The vast majority of perpetrators were African-American.  When criticized, Chicago's mayor's first comments started with an "f" and ended with a "u."  Does that bother you?  Both of these issues would seem to be susceptible of apolitical, not left-right analysis.  But, I'm not young enough to know everything---prove how committed to resolving these issues you are.

No baseball shouldn't be an excuse to turn a baseball-only website whose owners less than six months ago restated their policy to penalize comments they deemed political into another journalistically inept Strib or Twitter.  Of course, the owners can use any excuse to change their site or hypocritically maintain its original theme.  But, if TD's owners want to develop a valuable site that attracts attention and respect, they've now failed.  Nick's comments belong on the letters-to-the-editor page of the PP.  If TD wants to allocate space to politics, then I'm deleting my account.  TD's owner's political views just aren't worth the trouble.  But, I hope they feel better....

I’m not reading anything in the OP that would be considered click bait or causing a divide. It’s only being done by people in the comments section.

If this topic is getting people that upset, I ask why? Is it hitting too close to home when they look in the mirror? If so, I think it’s time to make that realization and change for the better.

I agree and don't label it as click-bait either, but if we start valuing threads based on views or pages I think that's where you are headed. It does sow division as others have pointed out when you quote Cuomo it's equivalent to quoting Limbaugh for 'the other side'. Also some of us would like to give Kepler the benefit of the doubt rather than to inflame his character. My whole point is I don't know that this belongs in the Twins news thread, which is why I think your reaction is surprising to you, not that it's because people don't like what they see in the mirror. That seems unnecessarily inflammatory and divisive in of itself. I'll bow out. I've said my piece, it just makes me sad that even TD has become a place where lines are drawn and the other side must be evil.

I work hard to keep my baseball world inside of my snow globe. A place to escape into. I know the world is a ****ty place right now. I just did not want to read this in here.

This is one of the biggest Minnesota news stories of my lifetime (born 1978). Max Kepler put on a Blue Lives Matter mask and made national news. He then made a pithy, half-hearted apology. While I do understand that he is a very young man and was raised in Germany, he is still a public figure and a Twins player. How could a Twins website not cover it? 

 

As far as solutions are concerned, would you want Nick Nelson to cite studies about the value of mandatory police training in de-escalation techniques, awareness of white privilege and policy changes regarding the demilitarization of police (should our tax money pay for local police to have tanks and military weapons?) and immediate suspension of officers accused of policy brutality (Chauvin had 17 such accusations)?All of these measures have and are being studied and are working where they are being implemented. Do they belong in an article about Max Kepler? I'm not so sure. It certainly would have been a lot longer. Would the "shut up and dribble" crowd have read it? I have my doubts.

Why should he have to apologize for wearing a blue lives matter mask?

If you wanted to speak out about the cost of silence then by all means, go ahead. Its an important discussion to be having and your site is a viable place to have that discussion. 

But don't bring Kepler into this: he's not American, he wasn't trying to make a racially charged statement, and posts on social media are far from the most effective way to make a difference anyways. 

We should use this opportunity to make a difference ourselves: protest together and then return the next day to help clean up. So many of us focus on making this a politics issue where we have to chose a side and be divisive when we can acknowledge Floyd's murder, and protest against police violence while also not needlessly alienating others.

I appreciate the desire to write on this topic: its important! But this was a poor way to do so.

Thanks for writing this, Nick. It's a time for all of us to try to understand what's happening, from Max to me.

If it was happening to my family, if the system refuses to listen and needless deaths keep occurring over and over and over and over and over at the hands of law enforcement, what would I do? How do the powerless take the power that is refused them?

Some things rise above sports, rise above baseball. This is one of them. Thanks again.

Great article, Nick! Thanks for the courage to try to hold Kepler accountable for such a regrettable decision. I'm very skeptical of his claim to ignorance, and wearing the blue lives matter mask any time, especially at the exact moment this situation was coming to a head, is an inherently political act, whether he's aware of it or not. Saying 'all lives matter' or 'blue lives matter' is just a way of minimizing the justified rage of the black community that is disproportionately affected by police brutality.

"To not speak up is to be complicit."

That is a sword that cuts both ways. Not once in this article was mentioned the fact that these protests have almost immediately degenerated into riots. I also certainly didn't read a condemnation of said destruction of innocent peoples' personal property and livelihoods. You're remaining silent. By your own logic, you are complicit.

Because it's what gets rolled out instantly as soon as anyone suggests the police are behaving as though black lives aren't especially valuable in the course of doing their work. Deflect deflect deflect.

 

It's also hard to find a black officer wearing one of those flag insignias. I'm sure an exhaustive google image search will turn one up. Meanwhile, I go with the Occam's Razor explanation, that it's exclusively a white cop thing.
 

Are you claiming that cops behave like black lives aren't especially valuable in the course of doing their work? You're gonna need to provide some evidence of that assertion. And I'm not talking anecdotal, I mean hard statistics that show this is the case. Does that include black american cops? Do you become an honorary white guy when you put on a badge?