Former Rare Staff
Update, Oct. 26, 2017
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Oakland A’s catcher Bruce Maxwell claimed a waiter in his Alabama hometown denied him service after he became the first Major League Baseball player to take a knee for the national anthem; however, the waiter has since refuted his story.
“He is outright lying. This is really upsetting, as he was given full service; I didn’t even know who Bruce Maxwell was,” Matt Henry, a 42-year-old waiter at Keegan’s Public House, said. “This all started because I carded his friend who wanted to order a beer.”
Henry said Maxwell was eating lunch with a local councilman and another friend who had an expired ID. When the server refused to serve him, the friend reportedly followed him to the kitchen before a manager switched Henry to another table.
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“He asked me, ‘Don’t you know who Bruce Maxwell is?,’ and told me I was making everyone feel uncomfortable. Nobody was even paying attention to them,” Henry claimed. “I didn’t know anything about him or the kneeling. All I know is a friend of mine 15 years ago lost his job for serving someone a drink who happened to be underage, so if anyone looks under 30, I’m going to card them.”
Restaurant manager Anne Whalen corroborated his story, saying, “Matt came to me and told me that a guy wanted a beer, but his ID was not valid and told him he absolutely could not give it to him, we can go to jail for that in the state of Alabama. It was his friend causing all the fuss; none of us even knew who this baseball player was. I told him I had no idea who he was going on about. Eventually Matt just asked if we could put another server on the table so I did. … I can’t believe the story.”
Original Story, Oct. 24, 2017
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Bruce Maxwell, catcher for the Oakland A’s and the only Major League Baseball player so far to have taken a knee for the national anthem, claims a pro-Trump waiter in Alabama denied him service after he joined the widespread protest aimed at calling attention to racial injustice in America.
In a recent interview, Maxwell said he returned home to Alabama afterwards to face many people who were upset with him. While out to lunch with a city councilman, a waiter confronted him over his decision to knee and even denied him service because of it.
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“He denied us service at lunch, and they had to go get us another waiter to wait on our table in that same restaurant. He was like, ‘You’re the guy who took the knee? I voted for Trump and I stand for everything he stands for,'” Maxwell said of the waiter. “That’s where I’m from. Unless you’re subject to it, you won’t understand it, you won’t feel it. I’m 26 years old. I’m very respectful. I’m very educated. And it still happens to this day. That’s the reason that I’m kneeling – stuff like that.”
Maxwell comes from a military family and thinks of himself as a patriot. However, he was disturbed by President Trump’s recent criticism of kneeling NFL players, referring to them as “sons of bitches” and calling on team owners to fire them.
“This is beyond race,” he said. “This is about our president speaking out in a vulgar, negative way against people exercising their rights in a peaceful manner. It’s about mankind.”
