There always seems to be someone on social media looking to take down an individual person, player, or figure. New York Yankees starting pitcher Nestor Cortes wasn’t an exemption to the trend of cancel culture, as old tweets emerged from when Cortes was just 17 years old that included a racial slur.
Cortes mentioned the N-word multiple times in the tweets, which he expressed sincere embarrassment over after they were discovered.
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“Those aren’t the messages I want to send out,” Cortes said Monday, via the New York Post. “I deleted my Twitter to clean stuff up. Hopefully I can make a better impact in the world for the people that look up to me to give a better example.”
Cortes has been nothing but a positive influence for the Yankees this season, bringing happiness to fans and spreading positivity through his social media accounts. However, this undoubtedly leaves a stain on his image in the short term, but he vowed to correct his mistake and continue spreading good energy.
“I’m not gonna say I don’t [remember tweeting it], but I didn’t realize they were still there,” he said, via the New York Post. “It’s unacceptable. I could have managed myself better and said stuff differently.”
“I like to attract all the kids and maybe people who look at themselves like me, not the prototype, not the 6-foot-5, the 97 mph,” he said, via NJ.com. “Hopefully I can start sending better messages.
Nestor Cortes has been a revelation for the Yankees this season:
So far this season, the 27-year-old starter hosts the best ERA on the Yankees at 1.35. He has a career-best 11.03 strikeouts per nine rate, and a 90.6 left on-base percentage. Nestor is the best starter on the team right now, despite Gerrit Cole picking up his game tremendously after a tumultuous start to the 2022 season.
Despite his dominant season, Cortes was impacted emotionally by the emergence of those tweets.
“I was mad at myself to still see that on my Twitter. I think the last two years I’ve been pretty positive on Twitter, sending good messages. When I saw that, I was a little pissed off at myself for that stuff.”
Clearly, he holds himself to a much higher standard all these years later.