My friend responded to my comment with incredulity—“really, they’re doing that?”—so, off the ‘book I texted him a screenshot of Spencer’s feed.

“Oh come on. That’s fake,” he responded. Spencer was cruel, but not dumb enough to put something like that out on the internet.

I pointed out that the account was verified, told my friend that I happened to be very good at discerning real from fake news, thank you very much, and since he knew me well he could’ve given me the benefit of that doubt.

Adding Spencer to the list, he repeated his original sentiment—he didn’t care about Spencer’s or Brady’s, or anybody’s politics; he just wanted to enjoy his football. I reminded him that not all of us have the privilege of being able to separate politics’ out from certain sectors of our lives.

“I get that you’re mad and scared and I’m a white male…” he said. The “but” was implied—I was overreacting. He felt like he was the only sane one in the house, he said.

He was right; I am scared. As a Deaf person and a woman in the face of an administration who seems eager to flout the Americans with Disabilities Act and aren’t totally solid in their knowledge of where babies come from, I am scared for myself—but as a New Yorker I am also scared for my friends and neighbors who will suffer under these and other violations of human rights based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, class, or myriad intersections thereof.

Since I know him to be a smart, well-read man, I thought my friend’s empathy on this front would be intact, too. I told him it was his job to be the sane one now, when he wasn’t in danger of anything changing for him, his duty to be compassionate, since he had the ability to choose when and how to engage with the political situation.

“No,” he said. “I don’t have new jobs. I don’t have new conditions because of an election in my country.”

That was the last time we talked. What else is there to say? He stands firm in the belief that there is no need–moral or otherwise–for him to speak out on my, or anyone else’s behalf, once the administration comes for our Constitutional rights, even though his body, his family, his home and health insurance are safe. He couldn’t even do it when confronted with momentary discomfort in the face of a football team he kind of liked. It was the latest concrete rendering of something I’d come to notice over the past few months: when people say to “keep politics out of sports,” they really only mean keep liberal politics out.

Whenever the MLB has made gestures toward inclusivity, like banning hazing, including rituals that force rookies to dress like women, there is an outcry against the “wussification” or liberal snowflake takeover of the organization. But the MLB’s repeatedly fraught handling of players with histories of domestic violence is continually taken in stride by many fans and franchises, ours included. Meanwhile, former players like Curt Schilling use baseball fame to gain political power and spew racist and misogynistic vitriol out into the ether.

My partner says doing so might have put Schilling’s place in the MLB Hall of Fame at risk. I say the future of the MLB may well depend on that decision.

As America’s self-designated pastime, it will be interesting to see how the MLB and its franchises proceed while the definition of “America” itself shifts under our feet. Professional sports in general present an interesting divide: while NBA and WNBA stars have taken to speaking out about causes like Black Lives Matter and the immigration ban, the NFL’s Colin Kaepernick is worried enough about the effect of his National Anthem protests on his prospects that he’s assured the NFL he’ll give it up in 2017.

With respect to which way baseball will go, the answer lies in large part with the players. The Trump administration has raised the stakes beyond questions of offending fans with words or rituals; players themselves may well find themselves having to contend with negative racial stereotypes propagated via GOP immigration policy, including the proposed establishment of an office to track crimes committed by immigrants, and the ever-looming promise of “the wall.” And while of course a country has a right to secure borders, and foreign-born MLB players are surely all documented immigrants, moments in which American citizens like Muhammad Ali Jr. are repeatedly detained for the sound of their names show a blurring of lines between enforcement of the law and sweeping ethnic/racial hatreds. As of 2015, the MLB’s opening day rosters were made up of 29.3 percent Hispanic players. Will they feel galvanized by the uptick in hatred levied at their identity? Will they feel safe enough to speak out against it? I suspect we are about to find out.

In our social media age, it may seem like the mixing of sports and politics is a new conundrum, but really the questions are as old as the organizations themselves (older). And though progressives take the all the heat for bringing questions of “diversity” and “tolerance” to the mainstream, those roots go much deeper—after all, what are white supremacy and racism if not extreme forms of identity politics? As bigotry gets a mainstream platform, the MLB can’t rest on its #42 laurels. Color lines are alive and well, and so is the question of which side of history the sport will fall.

There is one striking difference between then and now, though—never has a U.S. President been more desperate to garner the approval of the “cool kids.” We know Trump is a sports fan, and that criticism from TV personalities, movie stars, musicians and sports players rankles him to an unprecedented degree. All it takes is a 3:00am tweet to catch his attention, so America’s favorite pastime could well impact its future, after all, if we let it.

Photo Credit: Anthony Gruppuso–USA TODAY Sports

It’s impossible to explain college football in the south if you haven’t been there. I spent 15 years in Florida and I still don’t quite get it. But there it is, dictating weekend schedules and friendships. In SEC territory, fall weddings are required to have TVs at the reception. Couples have broken up over team rivalries; no, seriously, I know a few. Tebow failing in the NFL doesn’t matter. He’s the pride and joy of the Sunshine State.

So when he decided to give baseball a try, I took 10 minutes to laugh and then texted everyone I still talk to from UF (there are only like three of them). Can you imagine if Tebow goes back to orange and blue after all this time?

He did, of course. On Sept. 8, before 8:00 a.m. and as everyone was groggily straggling into the office, Tebow became a Met.

I know the arguments against the signing:

1. That $100,000 signing bonus could have gone to someone else, to an actual prospect or to someone who needs the money. Tebow is neither of these things. But were the Wilpons really going to reallocate those funds elsewhere if they hadn’t signed him? Probably not. I’d rather he gets the money than they pocket it.
2. The former quarterback has controversial–I don’t want to get political, so we’ll just go with controversial–opinions and he’s been given another stage from which to proselytize. These are the opinions you get from the south. And if he hadn’t signed with the Mets, he still would have had a home at the SEC Network. Tebow’s controversial opinions weren’t going anywhere. Now at least maybe he’ll be too busy in batting practice to film commercials. And remember: this is a team that willingly, eagerly signed Jose Reyes, who was only made available after allegedly shoving his wife into a sliding glass balcony door in Maui. Morals are moot.
3. He’s going to take playing time from an actual baseball player. I asked Jeffrey Paternostro, Baseball Prospectus senior prospect writer and BP Mets writer and For All You Kids Out There podcast host and whatever other title he’s added this week, for a name–not a lecture, just a name–of a player whose spot is going to be lost when Tebow rides into town. I got the lecture anyway, but I also got a name: Arnaldo Berrios. I feel bad that Berrios is going to lose playing time. I really do. I’m sure he’s a great kid. But if it weren’t Tebow taking his at-bats, someone else was going to.
4. Tebow is probably, almost definitely, bad at baseball. Of course he’s bad at baseball. He’s not a baseball player. He doesn’t have baseball instincts. He hasn’t spent every free hour on a backfield playing long toss like hundreds of other minor league players have. No one thinks he’s going to be good at baseball. (Don’t cite batting practice home runs. Don’t respect people who cite batting practice home runs, either.)

The Mets don’t care if Tebow’s bad at baseball, because that’s not why they signed him. As soon as they were able to sell his shirseys, they stopped caring about getting him onto the 40-man roster too. The Tebow signing was about entertainment. The Wilpons have a product to sell, and that product is the Mets. Sure, that product is easier to sell when it’s hitting home runs and winning Cy Young Awards, but above all, they’re selling entertainment. And Tebow is entertaining.

The people want Tim Tebow. It’s as simple as that. For all their faults, the Mets aren’t stupid. They wouldn’t have signed Tebow without a plan. They’ll send him to Columbia or St. Lucie, to a team in a town that already trembles at his name. Those are the people who want to see Tebow in a Mets uniform. They’ll buy tickets and shirseys and line up along the left field fence for his autograph. They already did, in fact–a day after Tebow jerseys were made available online, they were the second most popular Mets nameplate sold at Fanatics, behind only Noah Syndergaard. Those fans are the ones the Mets front office cares about.

We forget sometimes, those of us who live online, on Baseball Twitter and in comment sections, that your “common baseball fan” does none of those things. Not “common baseball fan” in the negative sense it’s taken on, to mean stupid and ignorant. “Common baseball fan” as in the person who goes to the stadium purely for fun, who picks a favorite player because he made a great catch one time in an irrelevant Tuesday game in May. That’s the fan who MLB, and the Mets, care about. And that’s the fan who wants to see Tim Tebow play baseball.

Photo credit: Mark J. Rebilas–USA Today Sports

( * – Florida State grad / Editor’s Note: No one is perfect.)

First, a word about his alleged crime—though the charges against Reyes were dropped due to his victim’s unwillingness to testify (a common fear-based reaction in victims of spousal abuse, particularly pro-sports players’ spouses), the fact that charges were even filed suggests the overwhelming evidence against him. District attorneys don’t like to dilute their win-numbers with murky “he-said she-said” cases, and most states report dismissing more than half their domestic violence cases, in some places upwards of 80%). From the 911 call, we know the fight was intense enough to be noticed and broken up by hotel personnel, and from the police report, we know Reyes confessed to “an argument that turned physical and resulted in injuries,” injuries serious enough that his wife was not only treated by medics on the scene, but also transferred to the hospital afterward. Criminal charges aside, most pertinent to us—baseball fans—is the fact that the MLB’s governing body found Reyes in violation of its domestic violence policy.

The fact that the MLB has policy governing this kind of behavior speaks to both the seriousness of the alleged crime and the prevalence of the problem, in baseball and in professional sports at large. The violent nature of the wrongdoing is the reason why we should care about it more than we do Daniel Murphy’s homophobic idiocy or Colon’s lecherous and financially irresponsible behavior. (Though, yes, we should care about these, too.) And yet, as several BP Mets authors have written before me, all too often teams and fans alike allow the need to win to override our ability or desire to make good moral choices.

Baseball is both a game and a business, so some argue it doesn’t matter what a player does off the field—it only matters how well he plays. And while this does seem to be true in practice, it doesn’t make it good practice.

I understand that a person who is not a professional sports player might beat up his wife and be allowed to keep his job. With one in four women victims of domestic violence, anyone who works at a medium-sized business could statistically be working with a man, or multiple people, who are both good at their jobs and abusing their wives and/or children. Is it unfair that we treat the personal lives of public figures differently? Yes. (But I suppose that’s what the consolation millions are for.) In a perfect world, private sector employees would also not be allowed to commit violent acts against their families. But we are nowhere near perfect, and if change is going to happen, it must happen publicly first. This is the question at the crux of all MLB controversies—PEDs, hate speech, violent crimes, and the in-between—what is a professional sports player’s job?

What are we actually requiring of people who play in the MLB? We can say all that matters is a player’s actions during his allotted time on the field, but our own actions as fans suggest something different. If baseball was just about a specific set of physical skills and the points gained or lost because of them, we’d likely interact with the game much differently, perhaps like we do a lottery ticket—in passing, results-oriented. But baseball fans root for specific players and teams; we buy hats and jerseys and wear their names on our backs. Players in turn perform for us not only around the diamond, but on the Jumbotron, in interviews, and on social media. Fans and the media craft narratives: the come-from-behind underdog victory, the local boy makes good. Baseball’s personal elements, the way we as fans get attached to players and teams, are why we watch the games on TV and fill the stands. They are why we bring our children to those games, and point to the men on the field as something to which they should aspire.

Of course there is the question of another kind of narrative at play—rehabilitation and reform, second chances. And while part of me thinks a violent attack is deserving of a one-and-done ban for a player, the optimist in me (the one that roots for the Mets) sees the value in giving a person a chance to redeem himself. That doesn’t mean, though, we can remain silent about the implications of holding up Reyes as a role model.

To me, the Mets’ handling of Reyes’ return has been perhaps even more disappointing than their decision to re-sign him in the first place. At the very least Reyes should have had to start from a place that demonstrated contrition and humility, the very qualities a person lacks when he commits a violent assault against another person. The Mets should not have taken the number off the back of Travis d’Arnaud and given it to him (Rolex or not—reaffirming that tons of money makes assault go away is not the takeaway we want to be telegraphing); Reyes forfeited that number when he made the choices that got him suspended. The Mets should not have moved Curtis Granderson, the equivalent of a baseball saint, to give Reyes the leadoff spot; leadership is a privilege to be earned. The way Reyes’ return was handled essentially undid any punishment he got.

Can we continue to teach our children truisms like “there’s no ‘I’ in team” and “it’s not if you win or lose—it’s how you play the game,” on the one hand, and then then give a player who’s demonstrated moral reprehensibility the white glove treatment with the other? Can we continue to reinforce the message that the lives (and fandom) of women are not as important as the ball game, that a player is free to hit a woman as long as he also hits home runs?

I am tired of being told that this is the way of the world. Even if it’s true, it doesn’t have to be the way of the MLB. In fact, a relatively small pool of organized, talented individuals is the perfect microcosm via which to practice change and advocate for basic human decency. And while sweeping the crimes of rich and/or powerful men under the rug might be more of an American pastime than we care to admit, to throw up our hands and say it can’t be fixed, or worse, that it doesn’t matter, is not acceptable.

Photo Credit: Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

As reported through numerous outlets, Reyes was arrested on domestic violence charges over the offseason in Hawai’i. Though the charges were later dropped (due to a lack of cooperation from the victim), reports indicated that he had grabbed his wife by the throat, pushed her through a sliding glass door, and inflicted injury enough to result in a trip to the emergency room. While the nature of the dropped charges require us to use terms like “allegedly” and “reportedly” when talking about the actions of that night, there’s little debate over the fact that what occurred was a bleak example of domestic violence–a continued problem in professional sports–and truly abhorrent personal behavior.

The Colorado Rockies unceremoniously dumped Reyes as soon as his league-mandated suspension (51 games) ended, making him a free agent able to be signed for the league minimum. With the Mets struggling, missing team captain David Wright, and looking for an offensive burst, it seems as if any improvement at the hot corner would be invaluable. Now 33 years old, Reyes is a far cry from the superstar speedster he was when he began his Mets career, but there’s a chance he could still be productive in a diminished role on a team like the Mets. The decision to add Reyes could–possibly–be a good one from a pure performance and value perspective.

So this is the part of one of my articles where I’d normally look at the PECOTA or Steamer or ZiPS projections and try to suss out just how good he might be at Citi Field. I could try to come up with whether he’d be an upgrade or not over the myriad options the Mets have in their infield. But I’m not going to do that today, because doing that brings me face-to-face with an uncomfortable truth: that kind of performance analysis actually may matter.

Let’s get into the realm of the hypothetical for a moment. If Reyes isn’t a dramatic upgrade over Wilmer Flores or Ty Kelly or whomever else the Mets run out in their infield, then most people’s inclination would probably be to ignore him. The Mets have no real reason to add a player who would invoke a public relations nightmare or alienate the team’s fans. At the same time, baseball teams have a history of ignoring personal issues–criminal, civil, and otherwise–in order to field the best possible baseball team.

Here’s where I come to the hardest thing to grapple with–personally–in this discussion: I hate the fact that I have a different visceral reaction about the acquisition of Reyes depending on his performance. I am, at least theoretically, one of the persons most likely to give Reyes “a pass” and embrace him back as a member of the New York Mets. I’m male, have been fortunate enough to live a life never touched directly by domestic violence, and once counted Reyes as my favorite player (2003-2007). I believe in statistical analysis of player performance.

But I also have empathy and a conscience and sense of right and wrong, and the idea of Reyes’s actions in Hawai’i nauseate me. This is not how men–how humans–should conduct themselves. On a basic level, I want nothing to do with a person who commits acts of violence and disrespect like this, whose behavior stands counter to what I believe to be right. On another basic level, I recognize that if Reyes were to be the caliber of player of a Nolan Arenado or Manny Machado, I may feel differently about the Mets acquiring him. I care (too) deeply about this team’s success, despite myself.

My gut tells me that I’d find a way to root for him because I found a way to root for Daniel Murphy last year, despite comments about same-sex relationships that I found odious and repugnant. Of course, Murphy’s homophobia is an opinion and not a violent, criminal behavior; the behaviors of those two former Mets aren’t at all the same thing, though they might inspire similar feelings of disgust and discomfort in me as a fan. I rooted for Murphy’s on-field performance–not loudly, not without conflicting feelings–because I found a way to separate the man from the actions on the field. And if Reyes were the next coming of Evan Longoria, perhaps that same thing might happen again.

But we’re more than our guts. We’re more than our worst actions, and we have the capacity to improve and to change. Although I’m an optimist and believe in redemption and recovery, although I recognize that Mets fandom makes me strange and irrational, I don’t want to be morally conflicted when I watch a ballgame. I don’t want to see and hear and read short-sighted profiles on Reyes’ “redemption” and how the clubhouse has embraced their former friend. I’d be a hypocrite to say I don’t believe in second chances, or that Reyes may not eventually deserve some level of forgiveness for his actions. But I also don’t believe that the redemption he may or may not seek could ever, possibly, be found on a baseball diamond. That kind of redemption would come from a life led better than most, of a full understanding of the nature of his crime, and a lifelong, heartfelt, and impassioned attempt to prevent similar actions from ever taking place. It would not come from two triples and a Web Gem.

I want to be better than my ingrained desire to root for the Mets. I believe that not every bad act needs to be forgiven or forgotten so easily. I believe that the Mets–who already have a complicated history with women and female fans–should take the path away from Reyes, and not diminish the seriousness of his offenses by granting him another platform to achieve glory.

So as much as I want the Mets to chase down the Nationals, return to the World Series, and finally win a championship that I can remember (sorry, 1986–I was four), I don’t want this team to sign Jose Reyes. I don’t want them to trade for Aroldis Chapman. And if Noah Syndergaard or Yoenis Cespedes or a freshly-signed Bryce Harper ever commit a similar act, I’d want them to cut bait on that player too.

We have to be more than our worst actions, our impulses to win (or even just have fun) over everything, and our desire to neglect the bad in favor of the “good.” I’d like to continue to be that person. I’d like the Mets to start being that team.

Photo Credit: Chris Humphreys-USA TODAY Sports