It’s early in the baseball season, but it’s going to be hard to top what happened in Atlanta on Friday night for the major leagues’ self-own of the year. Of course, that’s what we all thought on Thursday night, when the news emerged of Trevor Bauer having his sticky balls inspected.
A lout behind the visitors’ dugout took aim at Bryce Harper, taunting the Phillies superstar by yelling at him that Ronald Acuña Jr. is better.
Or, to hear him say it, Ronald “Acoona.”
It’s pretty clear who can’t handle the truth here, and it’s not Harper. In fact, the 2015 National League MVP only seemed interested enough to turn around because he wanted to correct this guy’s pronunciation.
You can read Harper’s lips as he says things like “that’s not his name,” “Acu—ñ—a,” and “there’s an accent,” while motioning a tilde shape with his hand. J.T. Realmuto turning around and laughing at the idiot is solid stuff, too.
The heckler got what he was looking for online, which was a reaction of any kind, and yes, this is just giving him more of the attention that he wants, but it also needs to be highlighted that not all attention is good attention. And not pronouncing Acuña’s name correctly isn’t something to be proud of.
Acuña definitely speaks better English than this clod speaks Spanish. To assume that he wouldn’t be able to pronounce someone else’s name right… what, because he’s from Venezuela? Yeah, not a great look in a ballpark where they’re not hosting the All-Star Game this year and the organization is salty about it, and the Tomahawk Chop still plays nightly.