Jesus Christ, Edward Rogers

Now with 90% more swears!

Hey look, it’s one of the most reprehensible human beings on the planet. And a couple feet to his right is Donald Trump.

HEYO!

We have fun here, don’t we? But for real though, what in god’s green fuck is Edward S. Rogers, chairman of the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club, scion of the Rogers family, son of the man who absurdly towers in bronze (or actually, presumably, some shittier, cheaper alloy) above the southeast courtyard of the building formerly called SkyDome (now, naturally, the Rogers Centre), doing in Florida, at Mar-A-Lago, during a pandemic, smilingly posing with his family alongside the racist dog-whistling king of the dumbshits?

Sure, sure, he’s just doing the whole “being a billionaire failson” thing, but could ya maybe at least try to read the fucking room a little bit here?

Trump the man is an impotent little paranoid narcissist creep with appallingly tacky taste and no filter to stop him from saying the heinous shit that other Republicans believe but have the good sense not to admit in public, and I don’t know why anybody would want to spend any time near him except maybe to get a quick photo to impress their piece of shit rich guy friends. But Trump the symbol is somehow several degrees even more fucked up. He’s the politician white supremacists correctly believe is on their side. An endlessly bigoted avatar for the death cult of the terminally stupid lot who at their core live by one maxim: that anything that benefits them is inherently good, and anything that benefits anyone else, but not them personally, is inherently bad. A living, breathing, well-done steak shitting bat signal for anyone who is a gigantic piece of garbage and doesn’t care who knows it.

Yes, Rogers is a billionaire. Yes, as an MLB owner he’s already part of a club that includes odious creatures like the Ricketts family. So no, this isn’t at all surprising. And it’s not even the first time he’s shown himself to be swayed by Trump’s undeniable appeal to sociopathic crybabies.

But still, to have to deal with the team’s ostensible owner grinning like a buffoon next to Diaper Don the same week Jays fans are reckoning with a franchise icon having his name taken down from the stadium’s Level of Excellence because MLB found an investigation into charges of sexual misconduct against him to be extremely credible? It’s a lot! People don’t need this! I don’t need this!

Fuck, their just being down in Florida on a fucking family vacation while the rest of us are locked in our homes is bad enough.

It truly takes a staggering amount of ignorance, and a similarly immense lack of empathy, to not understand or care how dispiriting and infuriating a thing like this was going to be for people — even people who have already accepted, as we all have, that shitty people and shitty companies are in charge of a whole lot of the things we love.

It’s also just, like, really dumb? Somehow, against all odds, Rogers had been starting to build up some genuine goodwill for himself among savvy Jays fans. As the team has turned the corner under Mark Shapiro’s stewardship, the name Edward Rogers has begun being invoked positively where financial matters are concerned — something that wasn’t always the case when he was more of a background figure at the club.

For example, here’s how Shapiro began this winter’s introductory press conference for George Springer.

Good morning everyone, extremely excited to be with you today. And excited for, really, what is not just an important next step for the Blue Jays organization towards a championship future, but a historic day for us contractually as well. But what makes today most exciting is to be able to introduce George Springer to Blue Jays fans, in Toronto, across all of Canada and beyond, because of the talent he is and what that means to us in our process, but even more because of the person he is, his character, and his experience. What that's going to mean to our team, to our organization, and to our fans.

I want to take a minute to acknowledge and thank Edward Rogers for his consistent belief and support. To thank senior leadership at Rogers as well — Joe Natale, Tony Staffieri, and Jim Reid — for their consistent commitment and support of our plan throughout years (in which it) was more difficult to believe sometimes in what we were doing. This is a very important next step for us as an organization as we continue to get better and we continue to build a sustainable championship team. We are extremely excited for our fans, excited for you to meet George, and as excited for you to see him in a Blue Jays uniform over the next six years.

I, honest to god, have started to believe that Edward Rogers is probably a force for good in boardroom at 1 Mount Pleasant when it comes to the Blue Jays! This doesn’t change that, but it sure as hell makes having any sort of positive thought about the man feel that much more icky. And considering that Shapiro has been fighting an uphill public relations battle since literally day one, or that the current positive direction of the team has only just barely started to get a small number of fans to be able to say the word “Rogers” without spitting with revulsion, it is an incredible unforced error.

That said, I’m not going to pretend that I believe the team is actually going to be impacted in any tangible way by this. Trump is rightly a massively unpopular figure in this country, yes, but pro sports fandom is such a Faustian bargain already that I’d wager most fans will be able to put this all aside and carry on. And I’m not trying to say that they shouldn’t do exactly that.

I guess what I’m saying is fuck this bullshit and fuck these people and fuck making us have to think the morality of continuing to support one of the few things that brings real pleasure to our dreary goddamn lives!

Top image via Instagram/@CANADALAND

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