Someone on Major League Baseball’s social media team likely got a stern talking to Friday night.
The Los Angeles Angels hosted the Seattle Mariners at Angel Stadium, meaning Japanese superstars Shohei Ohtani and Ichiro Suzuki were in the same ballpark. MLB Twitter responded by sharing a photo of the Angels two-way phenom shaking hands with the Mariners legend, along with a troubling caption.
Take a look:
Yikes.
Ohanti, a 24-year-old pitching/hitting star, clearly shares little in common with Ichiro, a 44-year-old future Hall of Famer, other than nationality. More importantly, the fact the two men are Japanese does not mean they look alike.
For those unaware: The “Spider-Man pointing meme” typically is used to represent a situation where two indiscernible people, places or things collide.
Example A:
MLB unsurprisingly deleted the tweet, but the damage had been done. Screenshots are making the rounds on the internet, and fans are blasting the league for, at worst, being racist, and, at best, showing a complete lack of social awareness.
Here’s some of the reaction:
“What’s almost worse is that they deleted it, haven’t acknowledged it and are now pretending that it never happened,” one use wrote.
“Wow. This is shameful,” another wrote.
“Between this and the tone-deaf ‘triggered’ comment they made the other day, I’m unimpressed (and frankly disgusted) with whoever is running the MLB twitter page,” one fan said.
“Terrible tweet by the (MLB) shows how ignorant people are which probably makes it worse. MLB continues to be a ‘white mans game,’ ” another said.
Sure, the tweet only was meant as a harmless joke. But as MLB writer Sung Min Kim alluded to, the tweet also suggests the league needs more diversity on its social media team.
Of course, it’s also possible that MLB has plenty of minorities in its social media department, and this tweet simply slipped through the cracks.
Either way, it wasn’t a good look.
