Is raucous next?
The next chapter in Curt Schilling vs. Twitter trolls morphed into one of baseball's most familiar clashes: the Boston Red Sox vs. the New York Yankees. And again, Schilling won, dismantling one Yankees employee in particular.
On Sunday, Schilling penned a 1,700-word blog post exposing some of the Twitter trolls who had been harassing him by sending sexually explicit messages about his 17-year-old daughter, who he had publicly congratulated for getting into college. In many cases, these tweets were far, far over the line, going past your typical locker-room bro bragging and even into unacceptable talk of rape.
Schilling called out two of the Twitter bozos in particular: Sean MacDonald and Adam Nagel, both of whom have since deleted their accounts. In the aftermath of Schilling's crusade, Nagel was suspended by Brookdale Community College, where he's a student, and MacDonald was terminated by the Yankees, where he worked as a part-time ticket seller. MacDonald's tweets aimed at Schilling's daughter — which we won't reproduce here, but you can find on Schilling's blog — included things like which sexual positions he'd use on her.
MacDonald was hired as a part-time ticket seller for the New York Yankees at the end of January, according to Jason Zillo, the team's director of communications. Zillo said MacDonald worked about 18 hours over four days for the Yankees. Zillo said MacDonald was fired today.
"We have zero tolerance for anything like this," Zillo said. "We've terminated him."
MacDonald, who recently graduated, was a former vice president of the Theta Xi fraternity at Montclair State University.
The fraternity posted on social media that they were aware of the "inappropriate and offensive tweets that were posted by an alumnus of Theta Xi Fraternity. We agree wholeheartedly that cyber-bullying is unacceptable and should not be tolerated."
Consider this a harsh lesson in what Schilling said Sunday when he published his rant: "There are repercussions to your actions in the real world." Schilling didn't just respond to these knuckleheads on Twitter, but he researched who they were, called attention to their behavior to the world outside of social media and encouraged actual punishments for their trolly behavior.
While the comeuppance is warranted, sadly, it won't stop this type of behavior from occurring every day online. We live in an era in which people think they can say anything on social media, and just apologize or delete their accounts when they're backed into a corner. Schilling's saga might make someone think twice before firing off a stupid tweet aimed at a celeb or athlete, but it won't change the culture of the desperate-for-attention trolling that's taken over the web.