Is Milton Bradley’s Son The Reason He’s Distracted?
In a phone interview with the Chicago Sun-Times last week, Charlena Rector, the mother of beleaguered Cubs OF Milton Bradley, tried to come to her son’s aid and flesh out the motivation behind the recent frustrations that eventually led to his season-ending suspension.
Without even detailing exactly what Rector said, you just know there’s a whopper coming. Can you feel it?
Rector said that Bradley’s 3-year-old son as been subject to racial slurs at his school. His pre-school to be exact.
So here’s a good way to gauge what kind of person you are. Are you the type that hears something like that and immediately feels more sympathetic toward Bradley and suddenly fashion yourself a pseudopsychologist cleverly unspooling the ties that bind Chicago and racism in his mind? Or are you the type of person that had as difficult a time picturing 3-year-olds saying anything worse than “poophead” or “dummyface.” (Those, by the way, were not the slurs Ms. Rector claimed her grandson had been subject to).
Can 3-year-olds even speak clearly at that age? Aren’t they still breastfeeding? When do they get their drivers license? My timeline is all messed up.
Rector said that not only did her grandson’s classmates slur the poor boy, but teachers and other parents did too. Really? Other parents popped in to pick up their child and felt compelled to call a 3-year-old the nastiest word they could think of? Let’s say for a moment that this made perfect sense. Milton Bradley pulled down seven million bucks this year. There’s no other school anywhere in the greater Chicagoland area to which Bradley could transfer his son so that he didn’t face this type of abuse?
So the Bradley family believes a school whose teachers racially berate its students is the best Chicago has to offer.
If it was such a constant a treacherous attack, as Rector submits, was Bradley content to just stew about it and blame frat dudes sitting in Wrigley Field’s bleachers instead? His mother claims Bradley ”is a quiet person” and went on to say that ”he doesn’t want to talk about that because he doesn’t think anybody cares.”
Not talking to the press about your son is one thing. Allowing such an incident to go on long enough that you can’t muster any more than a piddling 40 RBIs and 12 homers suggests that the press aren’t the ones not caring in this situation.
”I watched his swing, and I could tell what was wrong,” Rector told the Sun-Times. She could tell that other kids’ moms were popping in, dropping swears on her grandson and then driving to arts & crafts class? That’s weirdly intuitive.
Let’s also assume that there’s a reasonable explanation for Bradley keeping his little boy in a school that sets mankind back 200 years. It’s September. Pre-school started only about a month ago. Before that, Bradley had the entire summer to deal with this problem. Before that, from mid-January (when he signed with the Cubs) to March (Spring Training in full swing) Bradley had nothing else to do. He was on vacation. He couldn’t have fixed the situation then? By Opening Day, this apparent display of racism amongst toddlers had to have been old news (if it was ever news to begin with).
Then Rector, in her Sun-Times interview, said something about how Bradley felt he’d never stack up to former Cub Mark DeRosa in the eyes of the fans. At that point I kinda tuned out.
It’s usually what happens when I’m overloaded with failed attempts at apologist nonsense.
Photo courtesy of Yahoo! Sports via Getty Images
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