Cubs use incredibly insensitive song after Aroldis Chapman outing
Someone in the Chicago Cubs organization is in big trouble. Following Aroldis Chapman’s appearance during Sunday night’s 6-4 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals, the club’s PA system started playing an incredibly inappropriate song.
The above tweet from ESPN’s Sarah Spain has been edited due to NSFW language. The song in question was featured on Prodigy’s 1997 album “The Fat of the Land.” You can listen to it here, though, as expected, the song contains NSFW language.
The usage of the song following Chapman’s appearance is incredibly puzzling and tone deaf considering Chapman was involved in a domestic incident during the offseason. Following an October argument in his Miami home, Chapman was accused of choking his girlfriend and firing eight gunshots into his garage.
On Monday morning, the Cubs said the use of the song was unintentional and a “strong response” would be coming, per Jesse Rogers of ESPN:
The Cubs say they unintentionally played the song ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ last night when Aroldis Chapman walked off the mound in the ninth inning. The Cubs will have a strong response to it this morning. It was “unfortunate and should not have happened,” according to the team.
The Cubs took a lot of heat for acquiring Chapman in July. The organization has preached bringing in quality players, and the move seemed to indicate they were abandoning those principles in order to do whatever it takes to win a World Series.
Chapman was not charged in the incident, though he received a 30-game suspension from Major League Baseball for his actions that night. Chapman accepted that suspension and apologized for firing his gun, but insisted he never hurt his girlfriend.
Chapman didn’t exactly kick off his Cubs career on the right foot. At his first press conference with the media, there was some uncertainty over whether Chapman could recall speaking to the Cubs front office about his off the field behavior prior to the trade. Cubs president Theo Epstein said the error was due to a translation issue, and Chapman later told ESPN reporter Pedro Gomez in Spanish that he did remember the conversation in question.
Playing the song “Smack my [expletive] up” following Chapman’s appearance Sunday is particularly egregious and tone deaf and a million other terrible things given his offseason allegations.
It’s also fair to question why a major-league team would still have that song in their rotation in 2016 given the lyrics. If you have not heard the song, the titular line is repeated multiple times.
After this incident, we’re going to guess the song will be deleted from the team’s audio system. We’re also going to guess at least one employee is going to be out of a job.
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Chris Cwik is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at christophercwik@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Chris_Cwik
