A former Yankees employee — behind some of the vulgar tweets directed at Gabby Schilling has been fired. He lost his job Monday after former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling outed him and others in a blog post.
The drama began after Schilling sent out a tweet congratulating his daughter Gabby for being accepted to Salve Regina University in Rhode Island last week.
It’s Schilling’s right to celebrate his daughter on social media — even though we know the trolls are always lurking. It’s just tough when the trolls are supposed to be professionals.
Sean MacDonald — who was a part-time ticket taker for the New York Yankees — found out the hard way that trolling is not always good business.
MacDonald hopped into Schillings mentions while the MLB analyst was congratulating Gabby and showering her with fatherly praise.
After that Schillings congratulations were flooded with “tweets with the word rape, bloody underwear and other vulgar words.
Schilling focused on MacDonald and Adam Nagel, a student at Brookdale Community College who college officials said has been suspended pending an official conduct review.
Nagel spit most of the venom — with MacDonald piggybacking and adding his his insights as well. The Yankee were quick to distance themselves from MacDonald, firing him and dowmplaying his status as an employee.
MacDonald was hired as a part-time ticket seller for the New York Yankees at the end of January, according to Jason Zillo, the team’s director of communications.
Zillo said MacDonald worked about 18 hours over four days for the Yankees. Zillo said MacDonald was fired today.
“We have zero tolerance for anything like this,” Zillo said. “We’ve terminated him.”
MacDonald, who recently graduated, was a former vice president of the Theta Xi fraternity at Montclair State University.
The fraternity posted on social media that they were aware of the “inappropriate and offensive tweets that were posted by an alumnus of Theta Xi Fraternity. We agree wholeheartedly that cyber-bullying is unacceptable and should not be tolerated.”
I don’t know if MacDonald’s life is ruined, but it was a major setback. The question will be asked by some — does utilizing your freedom to speak justify losing your job — while being kicked out of schoool?
The tweets were awful and I hope this can be a lesson learned for those trolling to become stars.
It definitely proves that social media is not for everyone.