Yuniel Escobar gay slur picture

There’s no point in getting all maudlin and preachy about this, but it should be shown to as many people as possible: Toronto Blue Jays shortstop Yunel Escobar showed up to Saturday’s game against the Boston Red Sox with “you are a faggot” written on his eye-black in Spanish. Somewhere an entire high school of Alabama football fans just got really into the Blue Jays.

The words under Mr. Escobar’s eyes were “TU ERE MARICON,” which can be translated as “You are a faggot.” Other possible translations of the phrase lack the homophobic connotation, but are nevertheless offensive.

Mr. Escobar, a 29-year-old native of Havana, Cuba, has been seen at other games this season with different Spanish phrases written on his eye black. (via The Globe And Mail)

The other translation that is offensive but not homophobic is, “you are a pussy”. Long story short, there’s no way he thought he was writing “you are a jerk” on his face in Spanish, and no matter how he translates it it was something stupid and awful. Like I said, I don’t need to hop up onto a soap box and start pointing giant fingers at a dude who wrote “you are a faggot” on his face in magic marker, and unless Sarah Palin starts TwitPicking herself wearing a Yunel Escobar jersey we can probably just roll our eyes, dismiss Yunel’s contributions to baseball with a wanking motion and continue not giving a shit about the Blue Jays.

Here’s a statement from the people who do care about the Blue Jays, the Blue Jays:

The Toronto Blue Jays do not support discrimination of any kind nor condone the message displayed by Yunel Escobar during Saturday’s game. The club takes this situation seriously and is investigating the matter.

Alex Anthopoulos, Sr. VP Baseball Operations and General Manager will be available to the media tomorrow afternoon at Yankee Stadium and we expect him to be joined by Yunel Escobar, Manager John Farrell and Coach Luis Rivera. Details and location for the media availability will be announced tomorrow.

I hope Yunel’s response to the media is either “a less important person did it and didn’t tell me what I was sticking to my face” followed by a mailroom firing or “I AM a homophobe, losers!” followed by a bunch of crotch-chopping. Maybe next time he’ll skip the slurs and go straight to the offensive eye-black classics, like “DONG 3:16″.

[h/t to Big League Stew]