On Friday morning, many of us were trying to process the shootings that occurred in Dallas the previous night, possibly wondering just what is currently going on in this country. For Los Angeles Dodgers prospect Micah Johnson, Friday morning was even more unusual, thanks to sharing a name with the shooter who killed five Dallas police officers.
Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, was an Army reservist who served a nine-month tour in Afghanistan. He was motivated by the police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Micah Drew Johnson, also 25, is a second baseman in the Dodgers organization currently playing with the team’s minor league affiliate in Oklahoma City.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Johnson’s Wikipedia page was updated Friday morning to wrongly identify him as the Dallas shooter.
Ugh. Some idiot defaced the wikipedia page of Dodgers prospect Micah Johnson, calling him the Dallas shooter. pic.twitter.com/2kljweomk3
— sam_gardner (@sam_gardner) July 8, 2016
In light of suddenly being identified as an infamous killer, Johnson felt the need to clarify that he not only wasn’t the man who shot and killed five Dallas police officers, but was also very much alive. (Micah Xavier Johnson was killed by a robot bomb in standoff with police.)
The second baseman posted this photo to Twitter Friday afternoon as proof of life and identity.
https://twitter.com/Micah_Johnson3/status/751453646223581185
Fortunately, according to the New York Daily News, Johnson hadn’t received any serious threats from anyone mistakenly believing him to be the Dallas shooter. The edit to his Wikipedia page seems to have been the only reaction, and has since been changed back to the proper information.
Johnson was traded from the Chicago White Sox organization to the Dodgers last December as part of the three-team deal that sent third baseman Todd Frazier from the Cincinnati Reds to the White Sox. He’s in his fourth year of professional baseball after being a ninth-round selection out of Indiana University. This season with Oklahoma City, Johnson is batting .262 with 11 doubles and 16 stolen bases.
From here on out, anything written about Micah Drew Johnson hopefully sticks solely to baseball and not mistaken identity with a now-infamous killer. Maybe the next time the name Micah Johnson is in the news will be when the infielder is called up to the major leagues.
[Maxim]
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About Ian Casselberry
Ian is a writer, editor, and podcaster. You can find his work at Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He's written for Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation.