Bob Brenly’s du-rag comment is the type of venom Black people like Marcus Stroman have to live with every day

One of the things Black people who speak up about racism, as well as those who are trying to be anti-racist allies, hear often from others is that they’re “tired” of all this talk about race. “Not everything is about race.” “Why don’t we ever talk about happy things like ice cream and rainbows?”

First, we can talk about what we want when we want, on whatever platform we’re afforded. But more importantly, if you’re tired of reading or hearing about incidents of racism and bigotry, try to imagine for one minute — really, spend 60 seconds considering — how exhausting it is living with these kind of incidents.

Every day. For some of you, it’s far too easy to hear Arizona Diamondbacks color commentator and former manager Bob Brenly blithely take a coded-but-not-really-coded shot at New York Mets pitcher Marcus Stroman during Tuesday night’s game and think it’s no big deal.

For some of us, it’s just more exhaustive stupidity, another time when a non-white baseball player is reminded, again, that for many in the game he’s not welcome.

With the cameras on Stroman in the bottom of the fourth inning as he prepared for another pitch, Brenly casually drops his non sequitur: “Pretty sure that’s the same du-rag the great Tom Seaver used to wear when he pitched for the Mets.”

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