Forbidden Love is a Cubs DNA series where our staff waxes poetic about a player on a team other than the Cubs. Maybe even one you think they should hate. In this installment, Staci states her case for why St. Louis ace Jack Flaherty deserves the title of the second Good Cardinal!!
My friends, Jack Flaherty is a very angry Cardinal right now and frankly, I don't blame him one bit. See, Flaherty is currently Dealing With Some Things. First of all, there's the Baseball Thing. You might have heard something about how MLB's owners keep unilaterally offering the same turd of a deal to the MLBPA over and over again to get the season started in the midst of a global pandemic, just packaged differently so it won't look like as much of a turd. Jack sees you, MLB owners.
Jack also sees the MLB owners trying to leverage this entire situation to impose a salary cap on the players in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement, which is coming up for negotiations next year.
Oh, and Jack ALSO sees you, Owner of the St. Louis Cardinals, when you spew garbage like this into the public ether:
To which Flaherty simply responded:
Does DeWitt think it's good that his ace pitcher who finished 2019 with a 2.75 ERA and 4th in Cy Young voting hates him? I don't think it's a good thing. Maybe he should give Flaherty to the Cubs, because Sassy Jack Flaherty is my favorite flavor of Cardinal since Smiling Possible Double Agent Dexter Fowler!
But that's not all. No, Jack Flaherty is also dealing with the Racial Injustice Thing. Much like me, Flaherty is mixed race. But I look white, which means I get to have all of the privilege that comes with that, even though I know how my fair-skinned grandmother passed so she could get off the reservation as soon as she was old enough, changed her traditional Cherokee name and moved as far away from tribal lands as possible because of the racism she faced on a daily basis. I tell people I'm Cherokee because I'm proud of it, and because sometimes it's "fun" to play GOTCHA! on all the closet racists out there.
Jack Flaherty has not been quiet since the murder of George Floyd. No, he has in fact been one of the more vocal athletes in all of sports about racial inequality, and one of the absolute most vocal in all of MLB.
And of course, in the replies to each one you can find something similar to this:
But does Jack shut up? ABSOLUTELY NOT. And bless him for it! Because while we don't trail off into politics often here at the DNA, we fully support Black Lives Matter, condemn racial injustice, and can't help but wonder why hearing about those things bothers certain people so much. Especially if it shines a light on the need for racial equality.
So while I'll always dread seeing Jack Flaherty's name on the line up card against the Cubs, he's quickly become The Only Good Cardinal Not Named Dex. And I think I can get behind that.
