Clapbacks and Twitter Trolls

Me clearly just enjoying writing and not dealing with social media trolls

​I think I should start this post with saying I’ve been a Twitter troll. I’ve been that sports fan. Ya know the one that’s complaining about Butch Jones coaching or play calling or how Tennessee football is terrible…yeah, I’m the hot take queen. Or at least I used to be. 

I’ve always been a sports fan. I mean I have a degree in journalism and did seven internships in college all in sports. I covered Texas high school football for two seasons out of college. I’ll always be invested in sports, I’ll always tell sports stories and I’ll probably always have hot takes. 

But I will say watching Matt play at the highest level in his sport and seeing the criticism has changed my hot take heart a little bit. Now I have journalistic integrity and I know what to say and what not to say, but being at this level has made me second guess tweeting out a sports hot take. For the sole reason is all of these athletes have families. This is their job. They don’t want to go out and make mistakes or just flat out suck sometimes, but it happens. (I’m not meaning to sound soft. I’m just being honest in how my heart has changed on this a little.)

I thought about putting some tweets here that I’ve seen about Matt. But then I thought nah, I don’t want to give those people attention. And I already want to have a section at the end of my book one day dedicated to the haters. :) Now is not the time.

There have been some just down right nasty, hateful, mean tweets throughout this season. I’ve made the rookie mistake of searching Matt’s name and seeing said tweets. I’ve stopped doing that now (for the most part — again something I’m working on).
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You guys are probably wondering where this is coming from. In Thursday’s game against the Phillies, Max Muncy was trying to leg out a single and stepped on Hoskins ankle on the bag. Total accident. Max apologizes right away. 

The very next play Matt is trying to beat out a single and his back foot hits Hoskins foot that is in the air. Matt immediately gets to the bag and says my bad and explains what happened. Hoskins is understandably frustrated which Matt and Max both play first and have had this happen before and its’ not a good feeling. It had been raining off and on the entire game. Field is super saturated. Everyone is still trying to play through it. Max and Matt just trying to get down the line without eating dirt. Hoskins just trying to get his footing and get his foot on the bag. Everyone is cool and understands no foul.
All is fine, right?!

Wrong. A guy who is a producer for a TV station in Philly and a contributor for NBC sports Philadelphia makes a video clip of the two plays saying they were not accidents, they were dirty plays by the Dodgers.
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I kept seeing it, and I couldn’t just not saying anything so I said this:

I’m tired of seeing this. And I’m saying something cause it’s Matt’s character in question. I’ve watched him play for almost 11 years and NOT ONE time has he made a dirty play. Was a four sport athlete in HS — not one dirty play.

Max would never either. Go on somewhere else. https://t.co/dFb0uQl7MM

— Jesica Beaty (@Jesica_Beaty) July 18, 2019

I said some other things that I’ve said in this blog post too. My tweet kind of blew up and was getting all kinds of comments and support from Dodger fans. I responded and starting arguing with some people who just weren’t getting the point I was trying to make. So I decided to take to this blog post and write what it’s like dealing with this kind of stuff.

I’ll let people tweet and say whatever they want about the caliber player they think Matt is or isn’t. That comes with the job and territory I think so I’ve sat back — maybe started typing out a response but never sent it — and just let people have that. But I will not let people talk about and question Matt’s character. 

Matt would never disrespect the game like people claimed he did yesterday. You know the guy HAS NEVER even been tossed from a game!!! (And y’all know how bad umpires are — ok, that’s a low blow I’m sorry, but you get my point.)

This guy doesn’t know Matt, but if he just asked a couple of people who do, they would tell you this was not a dirty play, and Matt would never do that. Also if he was watching the game which I’m sure he was, he would have seen not even Hoskins thought it was dirty.

Do the plays look bad? Yes, I see that. Should those guys know how to run down the line and where to step and blah blah blah? Yes. 

But just understand the field condition, two guys who are always playing hard and how they’ve both had this done to them before and it doesn’t feel good. Also, if we’re talking about foot work, I’ve never seen Matt put his foot on the bag like in Max’s case and I’ve never seen his foot up in the air like Hoskin’s was when Matt’s foot hit it. So there were miscues all around. There wasn’t intent to harm, period. There was never any talks or questions about suspensions from legitimate people.

As a journalist, I know how easy it is to put a narrative out there and make people have a certain perspective. I would never do that, but I’ve seen plenty of journalists who would and do. That’s one reason why I stood up for Matt in this and why it got me going because it was just unnecessary and untrue. Any level headed sports journalist maybe would have questioned these plays at first but then moved on.

Any player who has that dirty reputation got the rep from somewhere, and it might have stated with something like this. I’m not letting that narrative get started about Matt when it simply is not true and will never be true.

It’s hard seeing the negative stuff when it’s the person you love the most and when most of the people commenting have never even made $1 playing baseball. And I would bet those same people have paid to go watch guys like Matt play baseball. *shoulder shrug*

Anyway I wanted to address this in a post because that’s what I do. This (hopefully) will be the last time I address this here. Matt will continue to be the stand up guy he is on and off the field, and those actions will speak for themselves in the long run.