Flyers winger Wayne Simmonds was the target of some racist jackass on Thursday night when a banana was thrown at him during a shootout. Simmonds didn’t make huge deal of it and simply wants to put the incident behind him. From Simmonds via ESPN.com:
“It was unfortunate that this incident happened but I am above this sort of stuff,” he said. “This is something that is obviously out of my control. Moving forward, this incident is something that I will no longer comment on so I can just focus playing hockey for the Philadelphia Flyers.”
Flyers winger wayne Simmonds is receiving love from around the athletic world for his handling of Thursday's pathetic racial incident.
Simmonds has received support from athletes across the nation who unfortunately sometimes hear racial remarks hurled their way. Dolphins running back tweeted the following Saturday morning:
“Much respect to Wayne Simmonds for taking the high road and not responding to the racist act of an ignorant fan!”
You have to hope this is the only time Simmonds is targeted like this for the remainder of his career. And, anyone who knows the jackass who hurled the banana needs to call the dude out.
Thanks for calling the fan who did this a jackass and I agree, he needs to be outed yesterday so that perhaps he can experience the humiliation he clearly wanted and likely did cause. Sounds harsh I know, but for someone to be doing this in the 21st century suggests they are hard core and a strong message needs to be sent to him and others like him. Even worse that a Canadian journalist, Peter Adler of the Edmonton Journal questioned whether the incident was even racist (even though he still bizzarely deemed it deplorable) and suggested that the fan was being “lynched” without peole even asking or knowing what his motivation was. What a clueless and asinine assessment of the incident.
Oops, corrections…should have written “bizarrely” and “people”