Bakersfield: hot, dusty, reeking of oil and also home to your Bakersfield Condors. But while the minor-league hockey team might be always in search of fans, it might be tough for the Bakersfield Condors minor-league hockey team to sell group tickets to the Temple Beth El next season after this news: BAKERSFIELDNOW.COM reports that the reason for the mysterious suspensions of head coach Marty Raymond and assistant Mark Pederson was that they made anti-Semitic comments to Condors player Jason Bailey, who is Jewish.
(Bakersfield: A Wonderful City - Unless You’re a Jewish Hockey Player)
This raises a lot of questions, but none more prominently than this: they have Jewish hockey players? Also, they have Jews in Bakersfield? I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Bakersfield, and the closest I’ve ever come to seeing a Jewish person there was when I drove past a Noah’s Bagels once.
According to Condors team president Matthew Riley, the team had good reason to take the “extremely rare” action of suspending coaches during the season:
Riley didn’t want to go into detail about the incident, but says any derogatory comments about a person’s race or ethnicity are not acceptable. “Our owner’s Jewish,” stated Riley. “So obviously we took the matter or would have taken the matter very seriously, and methodically and done the right thing.”
Wait, there are two Jewish people in Bakersfield? And they are both involved in hockey? Raymond was suspended for seven days after the incident, and Pederson for two weeks. And Raymond will be back with the team next season but Pederson won’t: he’s taken a job as the head coach of the Netherlands national hockey team. Hope he packed a copy of “Van Curen’s Big Book of Jewish Slurs (Dutch to English Translation).”
But I still have a hard time believing that a head coach like Raymond would get so upset that he would use anti-Semitic slurs. After all, just check out how calm and collected he was in this game:
Well, at least Raymond might be popular with two of Bakersfield’s more dubious exports.
10:21 pm on May 29th, 2009
"This raises a lot of questions, but none more prominently than this: they have Jewish hockey players? Also, they have Jews in Bakersfield?"
Really? Don't you know the Jews control the world?
What's next, Dick? Jokes about black hockey players? That'd be farkin' HILARIOUS! Just think, you could swap the Noah's Bagel "joke" with a watermelon and fried chicken guffah!
Keep it up!
Not.
10:52 pm on May 29th, 2009
hah at the above pussy….
1:19 am on May 30th, 2009
As a loyal reader, I was astounded, no, shocked to see my beloved Bakersfield sign in a Brooks photo. However, delving into the text that accompanied it, I'm neither proud, nor suprised.
93308 is the zip code where the Bakersfield Sign resides.
2:07 pm on August 20th, 2009
People use racial slurs in Bakersfield all the time. My parents were taking a normal morning walk one Saturday in the North West and happened to pick up some aluminum cans when a guy in a truck stopped and yelled at them “Get a job and stop picking cans you lazy n*ggers!”
This is highly ironic considering my father has an advanced degree and is actually the developer of much of that area. (no one can tell his race from the name of the company). What’s even more disheartening is the young lady accompanying the man did not utter a word- which exemplifies why people continue this sort of behavior- no one checks them on it! Anyway, I like a lot of thinks about Bakersfield but it’s not nearly as cosmopolitan and advanced as you’d think a city with now almost 300+ thousand people might be. It’s a darn shame, especially in 2009.