The racist, disgraced former major league baseball pitcher was suspended by Major League Baseball after expressing slurs about blacks, gays, Asians, and just about anyone everyone else — except perhaps other bigoted rednecks – in an interview with Sports Illustrated magazine after the 1999 baseball season.
Sports Illustrated writer Jeff Pearlman asked Rocker if he would ever play for the New York Mets.
“I’d retire first. It’s the most hectic, nerve-wracking city,” Rocker said. “Imagine having to take the 7 Train to the ballpark looking like you’re riding through Beirut — next to some kid with purple hair, next to some queer with AIDS, right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time, right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing. . . . The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians-and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”
To clarify, this was John Rocker talking and not Donald Trump.
During the interview with Pearlman, Rocker cursed at and then spat on a Georgia State Route 400 toll machine and ridiculed the driving of Asian women. He also called his Curaçaoan teammate Randall Simon a “fat monkey”.
Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig suspended Rocker for 73 games for his comments.
The suspension was reduced to 12 games.
Rocker’s once-promising career was never the same.
He was out of baseball after the 2003 season.
In 2012 he began writing a weekly column for the ultra-conservative news site, WND.com.
https://www.wnd.com/author/jrocker/
Rocker took his interest in far-right politics a step further – and this will shock you – by endorsing Donald Trump with the following statement:
“I wish someone, excuse the frankness here, would have the sack, would have the backbone to make unpopular comments, and when folks come out — mainly media, special interest groups, factions, things like that — and just start hammering them and demanding apologies. … I’ve always wanted to see the person that’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ve made these comments, these are my beliefs, and you know what, if you don’t like it, stick it. I’m not apologizing, I’m not changing,’ ” Rocker told the Daily Caller.
Washington Post columnist Philip Bump then tried to summarize the meaning of the endorsement in a few sentences.
“So, to recap: A man notorious for his rude comments and conservative positions — positions that extend to concerns about immigration and ‘political correctness’ — has looked at the candidates for the presidency and decided that his choice is Donald Trump.
“Who could have guessed?”
