You may all have heard about this by now - I blame my own delay on the fact that the only time USA Today enters my radar screen is during work trips when I forget to tell the hotel to stop sending it up every morning. I can't imagine who wants to read it, save perhaps for some semi-literate oilman - crossing the nation, giving fat handshakes with his sausage fingers, screaming at the concierge that "I DEMAND MY NEWS IN PIE CHART FORM!" But I digress - plus, the man might have a point if USA Today keeps printing gems like this from Torii Hunter.

"People see dark faces out there, and the perception is that they're African American," Los Angeles Angels center fielder Torii Hunter says. "They're not us. They're impostors.

Ooookay. Now, that's the entire quote, and context does not help matters. Don't believe me?

"As African-American players, we have a theory that baseball can go get an imitator and pass them off as us," Hunter says. "It's like they had to get some kind of dark faces, so they go to the Dominican or Venezuela because you can get them cheaper. It's like, 'Why should I get this kid from the South Side of Chicago and have Scott Boras represent him and pay him $5 million when you can get a Dominican guy for a bag of chips?"

What a swell guy. He and Boras deserve each other. Also, he's clearly been misinformed about the market rate for top-class Venezuelan and Dominican talent. Say a ballplayer is African-American, but their family passed through Cuba, or Haiti, or somewhere else on their way to the States. What does that mean in Torii Hunter's fucked head? Why am I bringing this up? Is it just to jump on the reputation of a guy that said something woefully ignorant?

(And I mean, really, really ignorant. He makes the argument that despite being ... you know, black in skin tone, that Afro-Dominicans [and by extension, likely Afro-Cubans, Afro-Jamaicans and so on...] aren't ... black. I think my brain broke. I'm sorry I couldn't get to a third level of parentheses here. Next time.)

Anyway, the answer is yes, I'm piling on. I'm being a dick because what goes around comes around. He added his dick opinion to last year's Racism Witch Hunt Starring Milton Bradley. Remember? Allow me to refresh you (parenthesis mine):

Los Angeles Angels center fielder Torii Hunter said [racism] was one of the reasons he had the Cubs on his no-trade list for years while in Minnesota.

Good thing his considered, well-reasoned opinions on race have allowed him to view a franchise he occasionally played as the Stygian pit of ignorant racism that it is. I'm beginning to think that Torii Hunter, Milton Bradley, and Gordon Wittenmyer aren't a trio of brave truth-seekers. What's the correct plural for a pack of self-serving shit heads? Flock? Gaggle? Pack? Wait, I've got it. I think it's siege.

Yes, a siege of shit heads. That works nicely.

I hate to beat this dead horse once more, but for a time last year, people were afraid to defend Cubs fans and Wrigley Field because the accusations of racism were so serious, they must have been true. Never mind that Milton Bradley is a wife-smacking egomaniacal crackpot. Never mind that the Sun-Times was never known as the paragon of journalistic integrity. Never mind that Torii Hunter clearly doesn't know shit about crap. Doubtless Cubs fandom has a fractional minority of truly ignorant bastards - and may they all rot slowly and painfully in Hell - but in the dozens and dozens of games that I've been to, I've never heard a racist epithet used toward anyone at Wrigley Field. Much less do I view my beloved park as having a well-known ingrown culture of racism (coughcoughBOSTONcough). You don't have to believe me, but in these cases, it does help to consider the source.