Photo by Kevin H.

Remember Zach Houchins? He’s the Nationals draft pick who, after being selected in the 15th round by the team, had to delete his Twitter account after posting some revoltingly vulgar racial epithets to his long-since-deleted Twitter account. Well, exactly what everyone thought would happen to Houchins has happened — Adam Kilgore reports that the Nationals basically iced him out after the incident, and he’ll be heading back to school at Louisburg College for another year.

Houchins apologized for the remarks after the story broke, but based on Kilgore’s conversation with him today, we’re not sure if the gravity of the situation really sunk in:

“Honestly, in my eyes, there was no lesson to learn,” Houchins said. “It’s just what I said got blown out of proportion, and I paid the price for it.”

If anything, at least the whole ordeal taught the young man the first lesson of athletic stardom: no matter what you did, it’s always the media’s fault.