The official MLB Twitter account tried to make use of the Spider-Man pointing meme on Friday night, and did a very bad job of it.
The tweet featured a photo of Shohei Ohtani and Ichiro Suzuki, with the caption reading, “*Spider-Man pointing meme*.”
https://twitter.com/OldTakesExposed/status/1023024675734138881?s=19
So, that’s bad. There are definitely much, much better ways to try to explain that Ohtani and Ichiro are Japanese baseball superstars.
MLB deleted the tweet, but not before many Twitter followers pointed out how racist it came across. It’s especially not a good look following everything with Josh Hader’s racist and homophobic tweets, which surfaced during the All-Star Game.
Here’s some of the Twitter reaction to the tweet:
https://twitter.com/sung_minkim/status/1023026763016749057
https://twitter.com/aaron_kennelly/status/1023030081546006528
https://twitter.com/El__Tipo/status/1023019284585488384
https://twitter.com/FaithHopeLove_J/status/1023060829577592832
So far, @MLB hasn’t tweeted out an apology.