Yankees Fans Chanted "Uber" at Randy Dobnak and The Internet Was Offended On His Behalf

Randy Dobnak was the losing pitcher of record in today's New York Yankees - Minnesota Twins game. Dobnak gave up four runs on six hits in two innings before he was yanked. Oh, and he drove for Uber which everyone knows now because Yankees fans chanted it and now people are mad online. Here's the video from the Yes Network Twiter.

This is a pretty complicated one. There is nothing offensive about this chant, but the intention behind it was to embarrass or offend so that he would be distracted and play poorly. I mean, that's the point of chanting something at an opposing player, right?

Some people were then bothered that ESPN used a related headline on their front page. ("1-star start: Yanks shell Twins ex-driver rookie.") The game write up was from the Associated Press and was littered with references to Dobnak's former part-time job. The same thing would have happened if Dobnak had pitched seven scoreless innings and the Twins had won. The only difference is the Yankees would be the ones in the imaginary Ubers.

This isn't even close to some embarrassing secret. Dobnak's story is well-known if you follow such things. Dobnak's former job was the headline before the game and it's been a tidbit whenever he did anything of note with his desired career. As the AP story notes, he mentions his Uber rating in his Twitter bio. This is like chanting "hot sports debate" at Skip Bayless. You may mean it as an insult, but he really doesn't mind.

See, no one is being hurt here. No one is really offended by this. Are Yankees fans still bad? Yes, because they are Yankees fans, but that has nothing to do with this.

The truth is, all chants are stupid. The only exceptions being "We're not gonna protest" in PCU, and maybe the Rudy chant for Rudy in "Rudy" That was a legitimate moment. But what if the Georgia Tech fans had been the ones chanting?

Remember when Bill Simmons started a Twitter account to organize chants at Boston Celtics games? It was incredibly lame. Just like the Uber chant. Some chants are offensive, but this one wasn't it. It's only offensive in the way that the wave is offensive. It's not really, it's just kind of annoying.

See? The answer is no. The 2010 Celtics - Cavaliers series was not decided by a dumb chant. Today's ALDS game was not decided by a dumb chant. No one involved was bothered by any of this. They almost never are, but here we are arguing about who is the most offended and it's almost always us.