[masraum]

Originally Posted by stevej37

^^^ I don't think there was any 'mocking' done. He just was trying to imitate his talking.
I'd like to hear what Ohtani thought of it....

Originally Posted by 1990C4S

And there's the problem. You don't think he was mocking.

Of several million viewers some will be insulted, fairly, or not.

So MLB can't allow it.

And if he wasn't mocking, what exactly was he doing? Entertaining us?

That's exactly it. It didn't sound like he was being malicious or denigrating to the Japanese player to me, but then what was the purpose? Was it funny? I'm all for a joke, but it didn't seem funny to me. It didn't seem particularly offensive, but I can see how it absolutely would give a lot of folks pause and cause many to instantly be offended.

And, especially when you 1 don't personally know someone and their values and 2 only hear their voice, but can't see them and their body language, what are the odds that everyone listening got the right meaning of his speech.

We have green text here for a reason, and it's because in written word, it's hard to know what one person means. We have had many misunderstandings over the years based on written text. Spoken word is a little better because you can hear how they are presenting it, but even then, with a large audience, you're going to get a wide range of interpretations.