Time Machine: Language lesson

This story originally appeared in the Japanese newspaper Yukan Fuji in 2014.

TOKYO — MLB clubhouses are full of bravado and machoism, and so they are not the most diplomatically correct places in the world. Insults are freely exchanged as are practical jokes. 

There is, however, a line that you should not cross, and New York Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen discovered that recently when he made a crude joke to Daisuke  Matsuzaka’s interpreter, Jeff Cutler, a 30-year-old American who is half Japanese and has Asian features. Warthen then suddenly found himself the target of criticism in the American media.