10/05/2017: George Springer waving a smaller Texas flag prior to start of the ALDS Boston@Houston 1st game.
Here’s a follow up story to our big American and Texas flags presentation at Minute Maid Park prior to the opening of the ALDS on 10/05/17. Now it seems that The Boston Herald’s writer Jason Mastrodonato mistook the Texas flag for the one that commemorates Puerto Rico. “The Astros’ pregame ceremonies included a large Puerto Rican flag draped over the field next to a bigger American flag to honor the United States territory that was devastated recently by a hurricane,” Mastrodonato wrote.
Then, in describing a moment in which George Springer stepped out of the dugout and waved the Texas flag before the crowd, Mastrodonato did it again! “George Springer brought the Puerto Rican flag out with him when he was introduced and waved it back and forth to big applause.”
It’s a wonder the confused Boston writer didn’t first ask why the Astros kept brandishing the flag of their rival Texas Rangers prior to a playoff series. After all, it’s the Rangers who have imbedded the Texas flag into their own team colors and uniform styles. Of course, on some deeper level, it may simply have been prompted by another sad case of “racism by association”.
Associative Racism is easiest to grasp in these terms: “If you see a group of people, and you know that some of their principal members are Puerto Rican, you simply assume that all of them are Puerto Rican and that everything they might wear, touch or wave is also Puerto Rican.” – If you’ve done that yourself, you might be an associative racist.
At any rate, the public attention to this matter, until now, did not rise to suspicions of writer character creepism, but it did tread hard on the geographic, historical, and cultural symbol error of a Boston writer who was expected to have known better and not fallen to error on such a basic level. When Red Sox managers make mistakes on this level, – mistakes like getting yourself ejected in the 2nd inning of n elimination game that your club goes on to lose – they get fired. When Boston writers also make “dummy down” errors, their editors compose an appropriate errata to accompany the corrected copies of the errant writer’s material.
“A previous version of the (Mastrodonato) notebook inaccurately stated that pregame ceremonies included the unfurling of a large Puerto Rican flag. The flag was in fact the Texas state flag. We regret the error,” the Boston Herald errata in this matter now reads – as poor jolted Jason’s paychecks, unlike those of fired Red Sox manager John Farrell, still reach the bank for deposit.
In mild fairness to the mistaken writer, a quick look here at the actual flag of Puerto Rico suggests that they indeed are similar to the State of Texas flag:
Puerto Rico Flag
For further information, check out the following article and its link to another source:
http://therealside.com/2017/10/the-boston-herald-needs-a-flag-lesson/
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Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle
The Pecan Park Eagle 
October 12, 2017 at 12:48 pm |
Well done my Puerto Rican brother!!
October 12, 2017 at 1:51 pm |
Actually, the flag that more closely resembles the Texas flag is the flag of Chile. The flag of Puerto Rico is usually confused with that of Cuba: the same design, but with the colors reversed.