Blue Jays Pitcher Complains About United Airlines On Twitter And It Spectacularly Backfires

Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass

Getty Image / Thomas Skrlj


Toronto Blue Jays relief pitcher Anthony Bass took to social media to share a grievance directed at United Airlines on Sunday.

I was stuck in an airport for 8+ extra hours yesterday due to United Airlines’ delays and can wholeheartedly sympathize with the anger directed at United. But Anthony Bass’ tweet spectacularly backfired as it had nothing to do with the United delays.

Anthony Bass tweeted a photo of his family on a United flight with the ground covered in popcorn. His caption reads “just made my 22 week pregnant wife traveling with a 5 year old and 2 year old get on her hands and knees to pick up the popcorn mess by my youngest daughter. Are you kidding me?!?!

It’s easy to see why Anthony Bass was frustrated. His wife is evidently pregnant and had to get on the ground to clean. But his frustration was misplaced because it 1000% isn’t the job of United Airlines flight attendants to get on the ground and pick up a mess left by passengers.

According to Spotrac, Bass has made $10.8 million in his MLB career so he’s presumably pretty well off at this point. A response to Bass’ tweet about who should clean up the mess revealed a disconnect between the pitcher and others:

The replies to Anthony Bass’ tweets shows just out out of touch he is:

Tiffany Bond replied “As someone who has definitely traveled with two small kiddos cross country by myself before…the rule is clean up after your own gremlins.”

Others swooped into Bass’ replies to spell it out:

Spelling it out:

Presumably the cleaning came after the photo:

Anthony Bass replied to a few tweets that he cherry-picked from the replies:

‘Provided the popcorn’…Just because someone offers my toddler ice cream at 9 in the morning doesn’t mean he’s getting it. If I think he’s going to make a mess I will absolutely refuse certain foods and there isn’t a parent alive who hasn’t thought the same at some point.

There is no cleaning crew. Anyone who flies on commercial airlines knows this. That is why the flight crew walks up and down the aisle repeatedly throughout flights with open trash bags to pick up trash. This prevents them from having to clean up a huge mess at the end of a flight.

Flights are disinfected at the end of each flight. They are then cleaned at the end of the night. But there isn’t some magical cleaning crew that comes in after each flight to clean up a mess left by toddlers. I know this as someone who flew with my own toddler on United Airlines less than 24 hours ago after suffering through a full day’s worth of delayed flights.

Anthony Bass seems to have honed in on the few people who seemed to be on his side. I didn’t see any of them in his replies but I’ll assume that’s the fault of the Twitter algorithm:

Of course, the replies to that tweet are of a similar nature:

My man called him LOW CLASS:

Mic drop:

Flying with a single toddler is no fun. Flying with two (as a solo parent) has to be an exercise in the limits of human patience. But complaining on social media that you were asked to clean up after your children making huge messes is pretty tone-deaf. It’s not about the pregnant wife, it’s about responsibility.