Assistant Auckland baseball coach celebrates victory with salute in hand • Punishment? Rebuke and apology "All my career I've been dealing with Nazi jokes", Cody Decker raged • over a new Pandora's box opened in American sports

• Ryan Christensen salutes. The apology comes later

  Photo: 

  AFP

The professional baseball league in the USA, the MLB, has suffered a lot since the return of the Corona lag, and is considered to be responsible for the most failed comeback of all the professional sports leagues, with a huge number of infections among the players.

But the new antisemitic affair, which erupted this past weekend, threatens to drop the ground beneath the most "American" industry, even in the face of the disintegration of American society since the outbreak of the corona - this is probably just another link in the chain.

Auckland Athletics assistant coach Ryan Christensen was caught on camera twice in a row by a hand-held salute, identified with Nazi supporters, as part of celebrations of the victory over the Texas Rangers. One of the team players hurriedly lowered his saluting hand, but a few seconds later he was seen repeating the same action and saluting with a raised hand.

"I apologize for that, it was unintentional and I do not believe the message of this salute," Christensen was quick to apologize after the filmed segment was circulated everywhere. Just a day after the incident, it was announced in Oakland that they had a conversation with the assistant coach, and that he understood the seriousness of his actions and their consequences.

Auckland Athletics players. The team will not take any further steps against Christensen // Photo: AP

His colleagues, some of them Jews, were also quick to make it clear that he was "a very advanced guy in his way of thinking, and there is no chance that he did things on purpose." And Oakland announced that they had contented themselves with a conversation with him and that no further steps would be taken against Christensen. The league, meanwhile, is silent, and it seems that the reprimand he received from his team will be the only punishment.

"It's just the tip of the iceberg"

Whoever was not surprised by the behavior of the assistant coach, and especially by the narcissistic reaction of the team and the league itself, is the Jewish player who retired last year, Cody Decker. "What you saw is just the tip of the iceberg. In 'Nazi Jokes' it's something I've been dealing with all my career," Decker said following the incident, "I can only say that if I had been on the field and seen this salute, it would have ended completely differently. And educating - that's the only way to deal with people like Christensen. "

The first Israeli in the MLB

Almost ironically, over the past week there has been little history in the major American league when a player with a blue ID card first played in MLB.

The Israeli national team player Ryan Lavernawi, although already 33 years old and considered one of the oldest players in American baseball, but his appearance in the Miami Marlins uniform last Thursday was his first as an Israeli citizen - thus becoming the first Israeli in the history of the American baseball league.