The New York Yankees’ newly drafted player drew a swastika on the door of a Jewish student’s dorm room when he was a 17-year-old freshman at the University of Nebraska, The Athletic reported on Wednesday.
“I felt like the worst person in the world,” Core Jackson told the sports newspaper of the incident that took place in 2021.
He said that he was “blackout drunk” and that he “broke down in tears” when someone told him what he had done the next day.
Jackson was fined by the university and ordered to perform community service and undergo online sensitivity training, according to the Guardian. Jackson was not arrested and his baseball career did not suffer any consequences, the report added.
Responding to a request for comment, the University of Nebraska said that it “takes discrimination and similar allegations very seriously and has policies and procedures in place to rapidly respond to student concerns,” Yahoo! Sports reported.
In September 2024, Jackson was charged with DUI when playing for the University of Utah. His case was reduced to misdemeanor impaired driving, resulting in a sentence of community service, substance abuse training and fines, the report added.
The Yankees knew all about Jackson’s history. The shortstop was urged by his agent to disclose to all 30 Major League Baseball teams about his past ahead of the 2025 MLB Draft.
Speaking with The Athletic, Yankees amateur scouting director Damon Oppenheimer said the team was looking for “accountability. … I think [Jackson’s] actions have shown his remorse. He’s acknowledged it. I think he’s taken the right steps to continue to learn, to understand what he’s done.”
Oppenheimer said that the team has done more “due diligence” on Jackson than any other player in his 23-year career.
The Yankees’ controlling owner Hal Steinbrenner and president Randy Levine, who is Jewish, supported the decision to draft the player, along with high-ranking Jewish members of the club, according to Yahoo! Sports.
Jackson signed for $147,500, well below the lot value of $411,100 for the 164th overall pick, the Guardian reported. He was a career .363/.455/.577 hitter at Utah and was named first-team all-conference in both of his years at the school, according to Yahoo! Sports.
“I think that his tool set, his athleticism, his performance was definitely something that would have gone a lot higher in the draft” had Jackson’s past was devoid of the swastika incident, Oppenheimer was quoted as saying.
The player’s agent, Blake Corosky, initially had no knowledge of the college incident. He learned about it after it surfaced in Jackson’s first interview with a Boston Red Sox scout during the draft process in 2024.
Corosky considered dropping him, but changed his decision after consulting with Elliot Steinmetz, the head men’s basketball coach at Yeshiva University and the father of one of his clients, Yahoo! Sports reported.
Steinmetz told The Athletic that following a phone call with Jackson, he could tell right away that he was “the nicest, sweetest kid in the world, [but] dumb as rocks when it came to these kinds of issues.”
Jackson reportedly grew up in a Christian household in the rural town of Wyoming, Ontario, and had little to no encounters with Jews while being largely ignorant about Jewish history.
Jackson told The Athletic that his upbringing does not excuse what he did, “But it shows how much I had to learn.”
His agent prompted him to take a five-week course with Yeshiva graduate student Ann Squicciarini, who said that the player was “attentive and engaged” during their hour-long weekly meetings.
“I think it’s important that this is part of my story,” Jackson was quoted as saying. “God has given me this platform, and I want to use it to show forgiveness and growth.”
