Nationals’ Cade Cavalli regrets choice of words that enraged the Red Sox’ Willson Contreras: ‘I’m extremely torn up’
After sleeping on it, Nationals pitcher Cade Cavalli and president of baseball operations Paul Toboni addressed the media Wednesday morning at Fenway Park about the scuffle that led to four ejections in Tuesday night’s game.
“I’m extremely torn up about the way that things were perceived,” Cavalli said. ”Obviously, there was no ill intention behind that. My teammates know me, my family knows me, this organization knows me. I couldn’t sleep because of it.”
“It hurt my heart, knowing that, if there’s a 13-year-old Black kid in D.C. that sees that — that looked up to me and thinks that he perceived it in a way that wasn’t intended the way that it came out, and then he’s not looking up to me anymore — that hurts my heart.”
As NESN microphones captured, and Contreras and interim manager Tracy recounted, the brawl started when Cavalli told Contreras, “Sit down, boy!” after striking him out in the fourth inning. That led to a brawl, during which Contreras charged toward Cavalli and eventually threw his helmet in Cavalli’s direction.
The league has not announced any additional discipline to either party.
“Boy” is seen as a racial epithet, commonly used during the Jim Crow era to demean and dehumanize Black people. It’s used colloquially in other ways, but Tracy, and many others, were taken aback in the moment. Contreras, who’s Venezuelan, declined to say whether he believed Cavalli’s words were racist when asked Tuesday.
Toboni, a former Sox assistant general manager, said he didn’t know what Cavalli had said until the following morning. He and Nationals manager Blake Butera spoke with Cavalli ahead of Wednesday’s 10-2 Washington victory.
“What we talked a lot about was, we within the Nationals organization have a really good understanding of who Cade is as a person,” Toboni said. “That doesn’t go for everyone else. Cade is a guy of great values, great morals, great leader. At the same time, his choice of words was not ideal. Candidly, I think he was unaware that it might have or induce a negative reaction from folks.”
Cavalli said he didn’t realize how his words had been perceived until he returned to the hotel.
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“It’s awful. Like you said something and somebody turns it around and it’s just not your character, it hurts. It wrecked me. It’s not a good feeling,” he said.
When he spoke after the game, Cavalli blamed the exchange of words with the Red Sox first baseman on a moment at the end of the first inning when Contreras brushed by him.
After passing Cavalli, Contreras put his hand up as a means of saying, “my bad,” though Tracy acknowledged that Cavalli “maybe didn’t see it” on his way back to the dugout.
Toboni made the importance of the team learning from the moment clear.
“A big part of it for me is: It doesn’t matter if your intent is OK. Because the bottom line is, there are folks around Washington, D.C., and around the country that might receive it differently than you receive it,” Toboni said. ”I think this is just a life thing, not necessarily a baseball team thing, but being able to empathize with other people’s existences, that’s a huge part of being a good human being.”
Toboni hadn’t yet spoken to the Red Sox but said he planned to, hoping to make clear that Cavalli’s intentions were not what they may have seemed. He also wants the team, and especially Contreras, to understand that Cavalli now recognizes the impact of his words.
Cavalli also hadn’t talked to Contreras, but said he wants to make his intentions clear if he gets the chance.
“There’s a history behind that word, and that’s just something that as a competitor, like in football or basketball, playing Wiffle ball with my brother, you don’t understand it,” Cavalli said. ”And then it gets perceived in a way that was not my intention, and then you learn from that. It’ll never happen again.”
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