WASHINGTON – In the small lobby at the entrance of the home clubhouse at Nationals Park, Josh Hader, still in his All-Star Game uniform, sat in a puffy chair, his head tilted down, his eyes fixed on his phone’s screen, his thumbs the only thing moving. They swiped up, left thumb then right thumb, left then right, left then right, for a minute, then two, then three, before a security guard closed the door and cocooned Hader from the throng waiting outside to ask if he was a racist, sexist, bigoted homophobe.

Outside the clubhouse, about 15 feet away, stood Hader’s family, a dozen of whom had been wearing jerseys featuring the Milwaukee Brewers star reliever’s No. 71. One by one, they had peeled off the shirts. Some were handed National League All-Star jerseys with no name or number on the back. One man, wearing a navy-blue Hader shirsey, took it off, turned it inside out and put it back on, the tag sticking out from the neckline. The group ascended a ramp and stepped onto a bus for players’ families, an anticlimax to what was supposed to be a celebratory night.

After Hader allowed a three-run home run to Jean Segura, Twitter users unearthed a series of reprehensible messages Hader had sent from his account over an eight-month period when he was 17. One said: “I hate gay people.” He used the N-word at least three times, once quoting a rap lyric, twice not. He used a fist emoji followed by “white power lol” and another time tweeted, simply, “KKK.” Two months before the Baltimore Orioles drafted him in 2012, he wrote: “Need a bitch that can f—, cook, clean right.”

(Warning: Some of the language used below is offensive)

View photos Screengrab of Josh Hader’s insensitive tweets. More

View photos Screengrab of Josh Hader’s insensitive tweets. More

On a night in which Mike Trout and Aaron Judge hit home runs and the American League won an extra-innings game 8-6 with two more home runs, and during an All-Star break in which Bryce Harper won the Home Run Derby in dramatic fashion, the 24-year-old Hader monopolized the postgame conversation, the latest athlete whose social-media posts revealed a sordid side.

When the clubhouse opened, Hader stood in the far corner and waited for a three-deep semicircle to gather around him. His first words were: “It was something that happened when I was 17 years old. As a child, I was immature. I obviously said some things that were inexcusable. That doesn’t reflect on who I am as a person today. And that’s just what it is.” By the fifth question, he apologized: “I’m deeply sorry for what I’ve said and what’s been going on. And like I said, that doesn’t reflect any of my beliefs going on now.” Asked how his thoughts had changed, he said: “There’s nothing before that I believe now.” His rationalizations centered on his age when he sent the tweets: “When you’re a kid, you tweet what’s on your mind.”

His arms crossed, his long hair tied in a bun, Hader struggled through around four minutes of talking, his discomfort evident. He came here to celebrate an all-time first half, in which he struck out 89 batters in 48 innings and established himself as one of the game’s best left-handed relief pitchers. He left with questions about how his past informs his present, how Major League Baseball could consider discipline, how his teammates would react.

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