Red Sox Decide "Racially Insensitive" David Ortiz Bobbleheads Are Too Trash to Give to Fans

The Red Sox decided these "racially insensitive" David Ortiz bobbleheads were too trash to hand out to their fans on Tuesday night.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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We’ve seen some pretty bad bobbleheads over the years. Remember the James Harden one the Rockets handed out to their fans last NBA season? LOL. So, so, sooooooo bad. It looked nothing like Harden.

When the Red Sox first showed off the David Ortiz bobbleheads that they planned on giving away to 15,000 fans before Tuesday night’s game against the Yankees, it didn’t look like they were going to run into the same problem the Rockets did. The Ortiz bobblehead looked a thousand times better than most other bobbleheads we see these days:

But on Tuesday afternoon, upon further review of the bobbleheads, the Red Sox announced they were canceling the Ortiz bobblehead giveaway because some people within the organization felt the bobbleheads "were unacceptable to the club and not appropriate for distribution":

And after seeing this photo of one of the bobbleheads up close and personal, it was hard to argue with that assessment:

Twitter, of course, went all the way in on the awful bobbleheads:

Ortiz himself was also like, "Um, nah":

And as of late Tuesday afternoon, the Red Sox clarified their position further by having team president Sam Kennedy talk about why he felt it was a bad look for the team to give out the bobbleheads. He believes the Ortiz bobbleheads are "racially insensitive" and said the team will work to roll out a much better Ortiz bobblehead in the future.

"I thought the bobbleheads were an inaccurate portrayal of David," Kennedy said. "To go further, I thought the facial features were racially insensitive."

Kennedy added that he didn’t want to take a chance and offend a single fan by letting the bobblehead giveaway go on as planned.

"If we had a scenario where one fan would be offended, the right decision where I sat was to pull the plug on distributing all 15,000 of them," he said. "And that’s what we did and we certainly apologize."

That decision was ultimately for the best for everyone involved. Better luck next time, Red Sox.

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