San Francisco Giants first base coach Antoan Richardson was ejected from Tuesday night’s game against the San Diego Padres, and he said racism was to blame.
The Giants got out to a huge early lead and knocked Yu Darvish out of the game in the second.
In the third inning, Padres third base coach Mike Shildt had an exchange with Richardson, who was in the Giants’ dugout.
According to Richardson, Shildt was looking into the Giants’ dugout, which led Richardson said something to the Padres coach.
“Can I help you? Are you looking for somebody?” Richardson says he asked Shildt.
Shildt apparently said he was looking for Giants pitcher Alex Wood. That’s when Giants manager Gabe Kapler came over. Shildt supposedly yelled a message Richardson believed was intended for the manager.
“He yelled, ‘You need to control that motherf—-r,’ ” Richardson claims Shildt said.
Richardson responded and then was ejected for supposedly instigating.
Richardson told reporters after Tuesday’s game that he felt “you need to control that motherf—er” was a racist comment from Shildt.
“At that point in time, I went up to the top step and I said, ‘Excuse me?’ I couldn’t believe what I heard. At that point in time, [Greg] Gibson, the crew chief, decided to toss me from the game. I think that his words were disproportionately unwarranted and [had] undertones of racism when he referred to me as ‘that motherf—-r,’ as if I am to be controlled or a piece of property or enslaved. I think it’s just really important that we understand what happened tonight,” Richardson said, via NBC Sports Bay Area.
Not only did Richardson feel Shildt’s comment was racist, but the Giants coach also was upset with the umpires for ejecting him.
“The second part that’s equally disappointing is that me being tossed by that umpire empowered this coach to continue to have conversations like that with people like me, and that’s really unfortunate that that’s what happened tonight,” Richardson said.
Richardson’s account of what happened is odd, because at no point does he suggest he did anything remotely close to instigating or deserving of an ejection. Moreover, telling a superior — which Kapler is to Richardson — to control a subordinate, is a chain-of-command issue, not a racist one.
It’s unquestionably disrespectful to call someone a “motherf—er.” It’s also disrespectful to tell someone that they need to be controlled by their boss.
But neither of those two issues are racist ones. For the comment to be racist, Richardson has to know that Shildt said it because Richardson is black, and not just because Shildt was being a jerk and angry his team was down by so much.
And that’s what Richardson has wrong.
Some of the friction between the Giants and Padres revolved around violations of the so-called “unwritten rules.”
The Padres were upset about getting their teeth kicked in. They took offense to the Giants stealing a base, and later bunting for a hit, while up by nine runs. After the game, Kapler defended his team’s actions.
Whatever issues Richardson had with Shildt seemed to be resolved on Wednesday. The two men met on the field at Oracle Park before the game to talk things out.
Last night, Antoan Richardson said Padres coach Mike Shildt yelled at him with "undertones of racism."
This morning, the two spoke and shared an embrace pic.twitter.com/F2c4g2HoPz
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) April 13, 2022
