Chris Moorhouse is going down in hockey history as the guy who’ll forever be known as the guy that made a disgusting, racist gesture towards Philadelphia’s Wayne Simmonds by tossing a banana at Simmonds during a shootout attempt.
Whether Moorhouse is either completely ignorant of racist gestures, living a sheltered life, or adding “boldfaced liar” to his résumé, his attorney says that Moorhouse had no idea that such a tactic was viewed as being racist.
The Globe And Mail has the details from Moorhouse’s attorney as to what his take is on the entire situation. Set your faces for “disbelief.”Faisal Joseph says Chris Moorhouse was caught up in the drama of a tense game featuring his favourite hockey team and threw the fruit in hopes of preventing the winning goal.
Moorhouse has admitted to throwing a banana at Philadelphia Flyers forward Wayne Simmonds, but Joseph says his client was unaware of the racial overtones of his actions.
Joseph says Moorhouse is “mortified” and deeply remorseful for the incident and fears it has clouded the reputation of his family and home town.
Let’s go down the checklist here. Moorhouse was caught up in the excitement of a preseason game shootout, had no idea about how racist it is to commit such an act, and fears he’s ruined his reputation. Hey, one out of three things being right would make for a great batting average in baseball.
We understand that it’s just his attorney making a plea to have people cool off on his client and pleading ignorance (in this particular way at least) makes for a nice try. We’re not buying it though. Now if Moorhouse had said he was a huge fan of Super Mario Kart and left his red turtle shell at home and grabbed the banana instead, we’d find that to be entertaining at least. This plea, however, falls well short of being believable.
Moorhouse was busted for doing something incredibly insensitive and disgusting and is trying very hard to save face. Best of luck there.