Meet Your Heroes
Jonathan India: confirmed awesome dude
They say you never meet your heroes. This holds true for actors, actresses, rockstars, and, worst of all, politicians, but the same also goes for athletes. You never know what they’re really like off the field and, much like us plebes, sometimes they’re just having a lousy day. We are happy to report, however, that Cincinnati Reds second baseman and reigning NL Rookie of the Year Jonathan India appears to be one of the good ones.
That was India at the Cincinnati Bengals’ tailgate on Saturday. He was just there to watch some football and have a couple of pops like everyone else, but he was recognized by die-hard Cincinnati sports fan Patrick Kinman. Patrick has autism and told India he can’t play baseball because of it. India responded by followed him on Instagram, offering him tickets to any Reds game he wants (including Opening Day), and, perhaps most importantly, by taking time to talk and connect with Patrick when there were probably a 100 hundred other things he could have been doing and 10,000 other people he could have been giving face time to. The whole thing strikes you as genuine and heartfelt and there's no doub that it made Kinman’s day/week/month.
India came under some very moderate (let’s not blow it out of proportion) fire when when old tweets sympathetic to Donald Trump surfaced during his Rookie of the Year candidacy last year. But that was Twitter and this is real life. You can disagree with India politically—sometimes the endorsement of a specific politician is an indicator of a person’s broader worldview, sometimes not—but interactions like this are what really put points on the board. So kudos to India and congrats to Kinman. These sorts of things are always subject to change at a moment’s notice, but for now we’re locking it in:
Jonathan India: confirmed awesome dude.