The Dark Side of the Diamond

The Forgotten Exile - John Rocker

I don’t remember where I was when the John Rocker story broke.

But I do remember how it felt.

The moment I read those words in Sports Illustrated (remember when they did hard-hitting exposes), it was like someone had pulled a tarp off a part of baseball we all kind of knew existed but didn’t really want to look at. Racism. Homophobia. Raw, unfiltered hate. And not from some anonymous message board or late-night bar rant, but from a 25-year-old closer with a 100-mph fastball and a playoff pedigree.

“If you’re looking for a story,” Rocker told Jeff Pearlman, “go back to New York and ride the 7 train.”
And then he unloaded. “Queers with AIDS,” “foreigners who don’t even speak English,” “some kid with purple hair next to some dude who just got out of jail.”

It was ugly. Not coded, not implied, fucking explicit. And it wasn’t just the content of what he said that stunned me. It was the ease. The comfort. The total absence of shame.

That was the moment I realized something that’s stuck with me ev…