Baltimore Orioles player Adam Jones (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Travis Waldron

The Baltimore Orioles pummeled the San Francisco Giants 10-2 Sunday afternoon, but all was not well for one Orioles player. After the game, O’s star Adam Jones tweeted that a San Francisco fan tossed a banana at him while he was playing centerfield during Sunday’s game.

There’s no video of the incident, but it seems improbable that Jones, who is black, would make it up out of thin air. The Giants said they didn’t hear reports during the game but will investigate video footage of the final inning to verify Jones’ claim.

Banana-throwing is still maddeningly common in sports like European soccer, but such explicit displays of racist behavior are largely absent from American games now. That’s obviously a good thing, but while we can’t stop every idiot fan who wants to do something stupid, we also shouldn’t allow the rarity of incidents like this to obscure the fact that racism toward black athletes still manifests itself in different ways quite often. After Jones tweeted about the incident, for instance, Twitter users questioned whether it was racially motivated or if it was just regular heckling, as if bananas are common ballpark cuisine along the lines of beer, sunflower seeds, and peanuts. Other black athletes have faced%

Read More African-American Baltimore Orioles Star Says Fans Threw Banana At Him During Game | ThinkProgress.