Did Ronald Acuña Jr and Freddie Freeman have a troubled relationship?

One thing that you always get with big-money transfers is drama. When that transfer involves one of the beloved key players leaving the World Series Champs to go play for his hometown team, well, that story has sauce on it. And now, we can add a little mustard.

On Wednesday, Atlanta Braves All-Star outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr spoke on an Instagram live interview and the takeaway was his friction with Freddie Freeman.

When asked what he will miss about Freeman, Acuña replied “nothing.” The interviewer then asks if they were not close and the All-Star outfielder elaborated, “Close because we shared the same stadium but we had a lot, how do you say … conflict, a lot of conflict.”

He then goes on to describe how the veterans would take him aside and chide him for wearing eye black or having his hat pulled down, telling him “that is not the way we do things here.”

So far, so normal. The sporting press ran with the story of how the two star players didn’t get along and it would seem to be the end of the story. Except for one thing. Ronald Acuña Jr tweeted in response to the reports that he was misquoted.

The interviewer, Yancen Pujols, then tweeted that he confirms that the original report is true. So what really was said?

One of the issues with getting it reported properly is that the interview was conducted in Spanish. Acuña is Venezuelan and Pujols is Dominican and any reports have, necessarily, been translated into English.

As anyone who has ever worked in translation can tell you, it is not a simple word-for-word exercise. The sense of what is being said is always the thing to keep in focus. In any language, there is nuance and context to consider when choosing words.

For example, in the opening quote of this article, Acuña was searching for a word and settled on “choque”. Now this can be translated in several ways: choque can mean “shock”, or it can mean “clash” or it can mean, as I have chosen, “conflict”. Many other outlets have chosen to use “clash”.

Now, you may argue that the two words mean the same, but there is a difference, however subtle, in the meaning. And these subtle differences could account for Acuña’s later denial.

It must be noted that Acuña made clear in his interview that his reference to the eye black incident was involving a group of veteran players. Freeman was presumably part of that but is not singled out as the one who wiped the eye black off his face. Acuña didn’t like it and felt humiliated but he also goes on to make clear that nobody would do that to him now, no because of any friction or bravado, but because Acuña is now becoming one of the veteran players.

The supporters of each player, and indeed each organization, are drawing battle lines over these remarks. How it plays out remains to be seen, but one thing both players have been clear on in their past comments is that they both respect the other as baseball players, if perhaps there is indeed no love lost between them.