Orioles' Jones: Schilling can't speak for black players
Adam Jones is not shy when it comes to speaking his mind, and he's certainly not going to be meek when confronted with racist epithets.
At the beginning of May, the Orioles outfielder was the target of racist taunts and peanuts being hurled from the stands at Fenway Park in Boston. It sparked a number of takes and talking points, including one where former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling said he thought Jones made the whole thing up.
In an interview with Yahoo Sports' Jeff Passan, Jones spoke about Schilling and how the former pitcher can't accurately speak for Jones or other black players, or their experiences.
"Schilling is over there with his rants. He just wants an outlet. Somebody will take his call, take his rants. He can keep them for himself," Jones said. "Because he’s never experienced anything like I have. I’ll stick with what (Mark) McLemore said about it: Schilling, hell of a career. But he’s never been black, and he’s never played the outfield in Boston."
Related: Schilling responds to Jones, saying he's maintaining a lie
Jones spends much of the interview contextualizing his experiences both as a baseball player and as a young man growing up in California. One thing he had to slowly get used to was the fact that his experience out West wasn't necessarily mirrored throughout the rest of the country.
And he's not going to back down from speaking his mind.
"I’m not afraid of the backlash, because it’s the truth. It’s my truth through my eyes. We all have our own truths. How we were raised – that’s our truth. Growing up in San Diego, or California in general, it’s a very liberal state. I grew up with blacks, whites, Mexicans, Filipinos. Everything was diverse. My class wasn’t predominately anything. Playing sports, it was diverse. My neighborhood was diverse.
"The worst thing is when people say, 'I don’t see color.' I think that’s the dumbest thing. Unless you’re colorblind, you see color. You may choose not to think of the other things that come with color, but you see color. At the ballpark in San Diego, you see the diversity. LA, Arizona, San Francisco, both Texas teams. You just see so much diversity. Growing up like that, I always assumed the rest of the United States, the rest of the world, was like that."
Jones adds that singling out Boston for racist attitudes and actions is a cop-out and ignores the struggles everywhere else.
The whole interview is a wide-ranging, nuanced discussion about Jones and his perspectives, and the things he's learned playing the game and traveling coast to coast for 14 years.