Online taunt of high school pitcher crosses the lineApril 22, 2010
BY PHIL ARVIAWith a name like "Jihad," you'd think, and perhaps then feel sad for having the thought, Jihad Yousef has gotten this sort of stuff before.
Even while this particular stuff twists your own stuffing into knots.
A couple of uses of the N-word. A reference to a noose. Another to slaves. The misspelled mention of the "ku kulx klan" that would make you laugh if your jaw hadn't started tightening the moment you started reading.
The Crete-Monee High School junior and pitcher must have heard it before on the ballfield, maybe. Or in the schoolyard. Or perhaps the electronic schoolyard that is Facebook.
"Never. Nothing," Yousef said. "Nothing that extreme at all."
Sunday evening, a day after his team was swept in a doubleheader by Peotone, Yousef received a Facebook message from the account of a Peotone player.
Baseball players talk smack all the time. Sometimes the funniest is borderline crude. This was way over the border and deep into the heart of Dixie, circa 1960.
How else to view one ill-punctuated paragraph that begins with a sentence referencing Yousef's Muslim religion and includes the warning, "come to Peotone and be ready to be noosed in the trees." Subsequent sentences devolved to the knuckle-dragging levels you might imagine.
-snip-
http://www.southtownstar.com/sports/arvia/2187734,042210arvia.article