Yunel Escobar wears offensive eye black

A. Isaac Senior Editor

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James G, Twitter

A Blue Jays fan posted this photo of Yunel Escobar from Saturday night’s game against the Red Sox. The words contained in the eye black “Tu ere maricon” loosely translates to “you are a faggot.”

We checked the game tape and it indeed looks legit. Here’s a screencap from the first inning.

MLBTV screenshot

The fan who posted the photo went on to say this:

There are some small Spanish locales where it translates to “pussy” not “faggot” but that’s a very small possibility.

… This is a bad word. It’s a homophobic slur. It may have made a closeted Blue Jay/Red Sox very upset inside. There are a million insults he could have used that would have been funny, this was not one of them.

Admittedly, Spanish is not my first or second language so I checked with a native speaker on the translation of maricon. He told me that fag was accurate and that other athletes in the past had gotten in trouble for using it so loosely.

Suffice it to say, Escobar’s an idiot. Even if the word is somewhat less offensive in his neck of the woods, he probably knows many consider it a slur. Bad judgement and above all, extremely ignorant.