Baseball fans came out in droves on social media to support Trey Mancini after insulting comments were aimed at him
On Monday, the Baltimore Orioles kicked off a series at Oriole Park at Camden Yards with the first of four games this week against the Kansas City Royals. The Orioles would end up losing Monday’s game, 3-2, doing so with star first baseman Trey Mancini getting the day off. In Sunday’s series finale against the New York Yankees, Mancini fouled a pitch off of his foot, which understandably would cause the “general soreness” that Nathan Ruiz of the Baltimore Sun reported.
The reports of Mancini’s absence from the O’s lineup on Monday caught the attention of former MLB pitcher, Kyle Farnsworth, who fired off an abstruse tweet about the situation.
With a combined figure of about 2,500 replies and quote tweets, fans, analysts, and players on Twitter let Farnsworth hear their displeasure. For one, many people pointed out the hypocritical thinking behind Farnsworth’s “play through soreness” attitude. In 2004 during his time with the Cubs, Farnsworth was shelved after taking the anger he felt from surrendering six runs in the ninth inning out on an electrical fan, suffering a sprain and bruising in his right knee from kicking the fan that stood in the runway between the Cubs’ clubhouse and dugout. The self-inflicted injury kept him out of play for three weeks.
A few notable people took the route of backing Mancini as well, including New York Mets pitcher Marcus Stroman. Including a handful of retweets, Stroman wanted to emphasize Mancini’s inspirational story of returning to Major League Baseball after his fight with cancer.
Since posting the original tweet on Monday night, Farnsworth has backpedaled on his insults of Mancini’s character. However, he noticeably did not apologize in the follow-up tweet he posted on Tuesday.
This season, Trey Mancini has played in 128 of the Orioles’ 136 games, slashing .262/.328/.452 with 21 home runs and 66 runs batted in.