When San Diego Padres outfielder Jeff Francoeur joined the minor-league El Paso Chihuahuas baseball team last month, he got hazed. But instead of pressuring him to drink too much or subjecting him to public humiliation, Francoeur's teammates and coaches pretended that Chihuahuas pitcher Jorge Reyes was deaf.



The team's "prank" fails on its fundamental premise – which is that anything about deafness is funny.

The media reaction to Francoeur's hazing has been predictably ignorant. Both Deadspin and the Washington Post called the team's antics "hilarious" CBS Sports used the word "amazing". They've all succumbed to the narrative of "co-workers hilariously prank the new guy", and ignored the more accurate version: "coworkers spend a month treating the new guy like absolute shit while also making fun of disabled people".

Oh, and the Chihuahuas put together a video:

"He's overcome a lot," Francoeur says of his teammate. "Being a deaf baseball player is very tough in this game, and seeing the way he's done it and handled himself has been awesome." He then adds that he had done his best to support Reyes and communicate with him as best he knows how. During this segment, in case you can't bring yourself to watch the whole thing, the word IDIOT flashes onscreen.

Francoeur's sin, it seems, is twofold. After a successful major league career, including the cover of Sports Illustrated, he accepted a demotion to the minor leagues and took it in stride. For that, his teammates felt he needed to be taken down a peg. Worse, apparently, was that Francoeur had the audacity of being nice.

So why, exactly, is Francoeur being called an idiot? Because he tried to be compassionate to a colleague, or because he respected someone for his achievements beyond a supposed disability? Many deaf individuals aren't fortunate enough to work with people who make the effort to learn about their life experiences and attempt to be respectful. That Francoeur was ridiculed for being kind to his co-worker is disgusting.

The deafness "prank" also involved players using some obviously fake sign language. In the video, the team's athletic trainer explains how he would "sign" to Reyes by using big, over-the-top gestures that made a mockery of ASL. Others elaborately over-enunciate their words, and even the manager joins in.

This kind of ignorance makes me shudder: what would happen if an actual deaf player joined a professional sports team? Nobody on the Chihuahuas even bothered with the most basic of research to find out how a real baseball team might accommodate or communicate with such a player.

But the behavior of a bunch of young baseball players highlights something worse, beyond the immature boys' clubs of too many professional sports: too many people in the US – in pop culture, across YouTube, in everyday working life – still see deafness as funny.

There are plenty of sitcoms who use a deaf character as a laugh line or to set up "hilarious" misunderstandings, from Ellen to Family Guy. And Reyes talks about how hard it was to keep up the Chihuahuas prank because he couldn't listen to music, except deaf Americans don't spend all day wishing they could listen to music. They're too busy dealing with red tape whenever they need an interpreter for a doctor's appointment, or explaining for the thousandth time why they can't sit in the exit row on an airplane, or watching well-intentioned co-workers have a conversation in which they aren't included, while wondering how to participate and become "one of the gang".

There are elite-level deaf athletes, actually, though the Chihuahuas clearly thought that a deaf baseball player was too incredible for anyone but the "idiot" Francoeur to believe. Seattle Seahawks fullback Derrick Coleman now has a Super Bowl ring, but he still has to deal with patronizing questions from reporters about how he "overcomes" his deafness. Deafness isn't an obstacle. It also isn't a laugh line, a good idea for a prank, or a character who can be performed by a third-rate baseball player.