At a baseball game at Fenway Park in Boston this week, Baltimore Orioles outfielder Adam Jones was peppered with racial epithets by fans, including one who threw a bag of peanuts at him.
A perennial all-star, Jones is one of the most visible African-American players in the major leagues. That the incident occurred less than a month after Major League Baseball celebrated the 70th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s breaking of the so-called color line speaks volumes about not only the challenges of diversity faced in the sport, but our nation at large.
[Boston sports struggle with perception built on racist past]
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To be sure, the verbal abuse that Jones faced is nowhere near the level that Robinson experienced during his rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947.