A young phenom, discovered playing football, famous for playing baseball, but really wants to play basketball. What do you call the kid?

Not “slut.”

Mo’ne Davis is the athletic prodigy from South Philly. (Pronounced Moe-nay.) Coach Steve Bandura discovered the 7-year-old Mo’ne horsing around on a football field, throwing perfect spirals and tackling boys. He encouraged her to come to a basketball practice. She excelled. She joined the basketball team he coached, and the Little League baseball team, the Monarchs, as a pitcher. She was the only girl on each team.

She tested into a private school across town. It takes 90 minutes to get there. She’s an honor roll student.

In recent years, Davis got famous for her Little League prowess. She’s the first girl to pitch a winning game, also the first to pitch a shutout. As a result, she’s also the first Little Leaguer to make the cover of Sports Illustrated. Spike Lee made a great short movie about her, “Throw Like a Girl.” Lee asks Davis “What do you do for fun?”

“Sleep.”

She was on the Tonight Show. When Jimmy Fallon told Davis this was the time on the show when they do random dancing she seemed surprised, unflustered, amused. She dances well, not to mention better than Kimmel.

She was on Steve Harvey’s show, which she knew better. When she heard about it, “I was with my teammates.” Someone said “That’s not fair!”

“I was like ‘Sorrrry.’ But I was really excited,” she told Harvey.

Then a Disney Channel movie project was announced, to be called “Throw Like Mo.”

That seems to have annoyed a lesser phenom, a college baseball player named Joey Casselberry, a freshman who’s a first baseman with a .389 batting average for Bloomsburg University. (In PA.) He took to Twitter, stupidly tweeting:

Disney is making a movie about Mo’Ne Davis? WHAT A JOKE. That slut got rocked by Nevada

This refers to a game lost by Davis’s team, with Davis pitching. Because no pitcher should be celebrated if they ever lose a game? (So, Mr. Casselberry, .389? WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER .611?)

“Slut” is usually a nasty thing to call a person. It’s particularly obnoxious to apply to a young girl. The predictable fury that greeted the tweet – including Bloomsburg kicking him off the team – caused Casselberry to tweet:

An example that one stupid tweet can ruin someone’s life and I couldn’t be more sorry about my actions last night. I please ask you to

Forgive me and truly understand that I am in no way shape or form a sexist, and I am a huge fan of Mo’ne. She was quite an inspiration.

Rotten apology, and then he deleted his Twitter account. Notice how he leads with his own suffering? It’s also an example of the that’s-not-me apology. ‘In no way shape or form am I the kind of person that calls someone slut!’ Although he did.

He does not seem to have apologized to Davis.

Slut is a strange word. It’s usually an insult, usually to or about a woman. Usually it means something about sex – being promiscuous, being a prostitute, dressing in too-sexy clothing. It’s often one step away from saying ‘She slept her way to the top.’ To some evil-minded people, anything they don’t like makes a woman a slut. Voting wrong, living in the wrong kind of family, publicly saying things they disagree with? Achievement? Slutty.

Some people direct the insult at any female, and I suppose that’s what Casselberry was doing. I doubt he actually thought Davis was doing anything wrong except getting more attention than he liked. But careless use of the word hasn’t made it powerless. It’s still a vicious thing to call a woman or girl. I note ESPN renders the word as “sl–”.

Davis didn’t like being called a slut. But she grasped the horror of being booted from your team. She told ESPN’s SportsCenter “Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone deserves a second chance. I know he didn’t mean it in that type of way. I know people get tired of seeing me on TV. But sometimes you got to think about what you’re doing before you do it.

“It hurt on my part, but he hurt even more. If it was me, I would want to take that back. I know how hard he’s worked. Why not give him a second chance?”

She was serious. She emailed Bloomsburg asking them to reinstate Casselberry. They’re thinking about it.

I agree with Davis. I think the university should make him do a proper apology – not a ‘poor ruined Joey is Mo’ne’s biggest fan’ apology – and put him back on the team.

Davis has put this behind her. I hope to see her follow through with her plan to go to the University of Connecticut, join the WNBA, and get on the cover of SI again playing the sport she really loves.