White Sox Manager Tony La Russa didn’t mince words when he was asked what happened between Yankees third baseman Josh Donaldson and Chicago shortstop Tim Anderson on Saturday.
“He made a racist comment,” La Russa said of Donaldson. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
Shortly after the Yankees beat Chicago at Yankee Stadium, 7-5, Donaldson, who is white, admitted to calling Anderson, who is Black, “Jackie” in the first inning. Anderson said it happened twice in the game. Anderson deemed the reference to Jackie Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, “disrespectful” before agreeing with his manager that the remark was racist.
“Basically, he was trying to call me Jackie Robinson,” Anderson said. “He was like, ‘Hey, what’s up Jackie?’ I don’t play like that. I don’t really play at all. I wasn’t really going to bother nobody today, but he made the comment, and you know, it was disrespectful and I don’t think it was called for. It was unnecessary.”
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