Tossed beer, Venmo requests, death threats: The fan/athlete relationship in the sports betting era

In the dictionary a fan is an enthusiastic devotee or an ardent admirer In fans are screaming at harassing and sending death threats to athletes without compunction Last week Arizona Diamondbacks infielder Ketel Marte went viral on social media when a so-called fan began cruelly taunting him about the death of his mother who was killed in a car accident in Marte was in tears his teammates comforting him From the dugout their manager Torrey Lovullo was incensed and shouting at the agitator who has since been banned indefinately from all Major League ballparks The occurrence prompted widespread commentary online and within Major League organizations about how athletes are viewed and treated How they get harassed both in-person and online How so-called fans will seek out not just the athlete but their loved ones on social media to voice their frustrations or worse How betting has changed the landscape of sports and opened a Pandora s Box What if anything are the league and teams doing to take care of their players Can this situation get better Will it get worse Every single day Beyond-the-pale verbal assaults are becoming a far too regular occurrence at sporting events During an April series in Cleveland someone in the stands shouted at Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran who s been open about his mental physical condition struggles and a suicide attempt in that he should have killed himself when he had the chance The Marte matter struck a chord with Red Sox reliever Garrett Whitlock who lost his brother Gavrie in a tragic drowning accident in Sept If someone talked about my brother I d allegedly have a whole nother word to say empathized Whitlock I don t know what was reported to Dennis Santana but I guarantee you it was something pretty bad for him to take a swing added Whitlock referring to the usually even-keeled Pirates reliever at the moment serving a three-game suspension after a physical altercation with someone in the seats above the visitors bullpen in Detroit The majority of the fan interactions I have away from the field are all positive and I m a pretty large guy and I m well-versed in self-defense so I don t really see someone literally trying to threaten me in person because that just would be a dumb mistake Whitlock stated with a chuckle But I ve been cussed out away from the park a couple of times I ve had beer thrown at me a couple of times I was walking on Commonwealth Ave after the playoff event in against the Astros a guy in a car threw a beer at me out of his window and then drove off Say it to my face There remains a sizable gap between online and face-to-face interactions Trolls unlikely to ever have the nerve to utter the words to their target s face are emboldened by the anonymity and lack of consequences afforded to them on social media platforms I maybe get to hateful messages a day and I m not even a big name guy I bet you Bregman and Story possibly get to a day and then Duran maybe gets -plus a day Whitlock mentioned of his Red Sox teammates Every performer gets these messages every single day It s not like a one-off thing we get them every single day I think the worst one I got personally was I blew a save on Sept and someone messaged me saying that I should have been in the Twin Towers when they went down In May Liam Hendriks revealed that he and his wife received death threats Threats against my life and my wife s life are horrible and cruel the veteran Red Sox reliever wrote on Instagram You need help Comments telling me to commit suicide and how you wish I died from cancer is disgusting and vile Maybe you should take a step back and re-evaluate your life s purpose before hiding behind a screen attacking players and their families When Whitlock s wife Jordan took to Instagram to voice her sponsorship for Marte she shared several cruel and violent messages their family has received to emphasize how commonplace cruelty toward athletes and their families has become Among them were references to sports betting and threats against the Whitlocks infant son But the big ones are when they message our family When you re messaging my wife threatening to kill my kid that s he paused to select a safe descriptor an thought-provoking one The line that was really crossed for me and I really got mad was when someone sought to message my wife about killing my kid I think MLB necessities to certainly start paying attention to that stuff Eye-opening Having pitched in the majors from - including five seasons in Boston Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow can relate to multiple of his players experiences but online harassment isn t one of them Horrific is the word that comes to mind he commented of the messages the Whitlocks received I played but I think Twitter was just becoming mainstream and I was presumably unaware enough to not really be super operational noted Breslow But it s scary these platforms for people to anonymously say these just like awful things You feel for the human side of all of these players It s really easy when they put on a uniform and they can do these things on a field that the bulk people can t to lose sight of the fact that they re still just fathers and husbands who are going home to families with kids And they re people at the end of the day In Pew shared that of U S adults had received physical threats online a increase from and had experienced sustained online harassment up from The Marte situation was eye-opening for Athlete Logos founder Dan Abrams in New York too He posted a new design to his sports apparel and art brand s X account a ballplayer superimposed on a green baseball diamond the back of his uniform bearing the word Human in place of a surname Surrounding the image an essential reminder Behind every jersey there is a human being What happened next shocked him I got thousands of responses and I d say at least players wives reposted Abrams informed the Herald It s very absorbing to see how numerous wives girlfriends mothers of athletes are saying This is terrible this is happening to our husbands our families I thought after a association loses a guy might get a couple of tweets You suck or whatever and I thought New York Philly Boston we re a little rougher than the rest of the country and that maybe doesn t happen everywhere But what I learned is how first of all how often this happens I ve had people from Savannah Bananas Korean and Japanese leagues every minor leagues every facet everyone related to baseball And I saw NBA s Karl Anthony Towns put something out for Marte It s widespread in every sport They shouldn t have to live like that Abrams decided to turn the design into a t-shirt and sell it on the Athlete Logos website All proceeds from the shirt will go to a charity surrounding athletes mental fitness He s also in talks to partner with the MLB Players Trust on the project Virtual becomes reality Even before he became a father last year Whitlock was concerned about the real-world implications of online vitriol Especially at Fenway Park which wasn t constructed with parking lots in mind In photos from the inaugural Opening Day in horses and automobiles idle together on an unpaved Jersey Street I ve been saying our parking is not safe for years now and nothing s happened Whitlock announced We re within arm s distance of people out there and all it takes is one bettor that feels like they ve lost everything There s no metal detector It takes one guy that s pissed off to bring a gun right there and shoot somebody That s the bigger protection thing to me the in-person We get spit at yelled at and until MLB genuinely decides to do something about the in-person things I don t think they re even going to do anything about the online Major League BetBall As if the anonymity provided by social media wasn t enough it became one-half of a lethal pairing in May when the Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act Suddenly the outcome of a event had real-life risk-and-reward consequences And the overwhelming consensus is that it s poisoning the well It s starting to become so bad that it has to be called out Abrams noted And almost every one of the players has mentioned sports betting as a turning point when it got worse I didn t know what kind of impact legalized sports betting would have but obviously you see a lot of people getting hate reported Alex Bregman I ve gotten messages online of curriculum I ve gotten yelled at during baseball games a bunch I try and not listen to it and just continue playing the championship Obviously it s real though There s a lot of hate on the internet nowadays that wasn t there when I first got into the league Almost every occurrence has been gambling-related I ve gotten Venmo requests people being like You expletive up my parlay you owe me money Whitlock reported I don t even call them fans I call those people degenerate gamblers To me betting has been the whole big thing about it And MLB s not going to do anything about it because they make so much money off the betting There s betting in parks Teams are like Hey we re making money off this so we re not going to do anything about it Until they genuinely take it seriously nothing s going to change And they can say they care all they want but they re making money and money s the thing that speaks to them so they re not going to do anything about it It s clear that what has changed is the stakes and the boldness with which people are willing to behave and social media gives them this anonymity revealed Red Sox chief baseball officer Craig Breslow You put all of these things together you have a situation that we need to figure out how to solve because these games are hard enough on their own Then when you couple that with feeling like I just feel awful I gave up a encounter and now I m going to go home and I m going to find out someone s threatening my family Where do we go from here Whitlock is among the athletes who feel the situation is without remedy He doesn t think Major League Baseball wants to take the proper policies Worse he isn t sure they even could If we sent every single one MLB would literally be swamped I don t even know if they have an inbox that can hold as a great number of he stated So I don t think that they can really do anything about it but the ones that need to be really taken seriously are the ones that are sent to family members stuff like that That s the bigger prevention thing to me the in-person We get spit at yelled at and until MLB definitely decides to do something about the in-person things I don t think they re even going to do anything about the online No one cares about it right now because nothing s happened but it s just going to take one circumstance Whitlock has one idea for how to improve performer safety He brought it up to Red Sox leadership including club president Sam Kennedy and principal owner John Henry at a band meeting in Breslow was hired in Nov They questioned us Is there something that you guys think we should do around the park or anything like that And I brought this up Whitlock commented I ve been saying our parking lot is not safe for years now and nothing s happened We re within arm s distance of people out there and all it takes is one bettor that feels like they ve lost everything There s no metal detector It takes one guy that s pissed off to bring a gun right there and shoot somebody Urged about the meeting Kennedy reported We take shield in general very seriously We ve got coverage here at Fenway Park but it s something that you can never be too careful about It s this spiral that we have to figure out how to stop I don t know what the answer is but there s absolutely more that we have to do Breslow disclosed As an organization I think we try to do everything we can to aid these guys but clearly we have not figured out how to do enough because it s still happening And I know it s affecting these guys How could it not