Trevor Bauer is as active on social media as any professional athlete in any sports league, so it goes without saying that the Cleveland Indians pitcher has experienced the downside of it on many occasions. Following his rough outing on Monday, Bauer wanted to call attention to some of that.
After he gave up seven earned runs on 10 hits in a loss to the Chicago White Sox, Bauer took to Twitter to share some of the death threats and hateful messages he received from angry fans. While the commentary is too vulgar to feature, here is a sampling:
“Bro u are the biggest p—y I ever seen. How do u let white sox smack the s— out of u. F—ing f–.”
“Leave the f—ing team and die in hell piece of s—. I really hope you and your family die in a car crash. Please f—ing die.”
“Could you please kill yourself?”
“I am Chinese. I will kill you.”
Bauer shared the screenshots with a message from him that said “stop online harassment, bullying and hate speech.” He also criticized Instagram for not providing an easy way to report those messages.
@instagram your platform doesn’t seem to give me a way to report this crap. Do you condone this type of behavior on your platform?
— Trevor Bauer (@BauerOutage) May 7, 2019
Bauer has become an expert at trolling fans on social media, but there is obviously a huge difference between friendly banter, death threats and hate speech. Unfortunately, all three seem to be equally used on social media.
