Torii Hunter said something stupid (again)

Well, this was what I feared.

Not necessarily that Torii Hunter would say something like this, but I was already wary about his return because of his history of off-the-field comments. These were all covered in my last post about Hunter, but just as a refresher, he's thrown teammates under the bus, attempted to attack teammates on multiple occasions, alienated his Hispanic teammates, announced that he wouldn't feel comfortable playing with a gay teammate, then called a reporter a prick for asking to elaborate on his comments.

As you likely heard, the Floyd Mayweather/Manny Pacquiao fight was on last night. Mayweather has received plenty of criticism lately for physically assaulting five different women a total of seven separate times over the years, and those are only the incidents we know about. Some people boycotted the fight last night specifically because of him, and Mayweather didn't help matters by having ESPN's Rachel Nichols and Michelle Beadle banned from last night's match because they've been outspoken about his domestic violence.

Last night, professional athletes and celebrities shared their predictions for the match last night. Torii Hunter was one of those people, but instead of simply saying that he favored Mayweather, Hunter had to go a step further. His tweet has been deleted as expected, but here's what he said.

As you might expect, many people responded in disgust that Torii was essentially saying that Mayweather's domestic violence did not concern him.

I'm not going to say "I told you so," but when I wrote my anti-Torii article that I linked at the beginning, I was fearful that Torii would say or do something newsworthy off the field that would become a distraction. Well, since being signed, he has called the Pioneer Press' Mike Berardino a prick for asking if his prior comments on homosexuality impacted his market as a free agent this past offseason. (To Berardino's credit, he didn't retaliate and actually published an unbiased account of the incident.) Now he admitted that Floyd Mayweather's history of battering women does not involve Torii at all.

This team is currently at .500 and has made an excellent turnaround after their 1-5 start to the season. They have weathered the PED suspension of Ervin Santana, multiple injuries to their starting rotation and bullpen, along with an offense that still hasn't reached its full potential. Hunter making the story about him is not what this team needs.

He's currently on a one-year contract and most likely is just keeping the outfield seat warm for Eddie Rosario and/or Byron Buxton, so perhaps I shouldn't be too upset with his antics. However, we're barely into May and he's already tallied two incidents since his return. I was displeased when I heard that he was an option for the Twins, I was unhappy when he was actually signed, and thus far he has not done anything to make me change my opinion.

Now that his original tweet has been deleted, I'm fully expecting some sort of half-hearted apology or "My tweet was taken out of context" or some other excuse for his comment. I hope that someone, anyone that actually matters to him will call him out and let him know that he can't try to downplay what he said. This is something I probably should have said in my "don't sign Torii" piece, but I suppose it's better late than never. I can't tolerate his opinions anymore and I feel you shouldn't, either.