The Arizona Diamondbacks host the St. Louis Cardinals Friday at Chase Field in their first game after the All-Star break. But, it was an incident at a baseball game in Chicago last month got the attention of the sports world — and not in a good way.
Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte was seen in tears on the field during a game against the White Sox. We later learned Marte had heard a fan yell at him about his mother, who’d died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic several years ago.
MLB banned the fan from all ballparks the following day. After the game, DBacks manager Torey Lovullo said it was a terrible moment, and that sometimes, fans go too far.
“At the end of the day, we’re human beings and we have emotions — and I saw him hurting and I wanted to protect him. I love you, and I’m with you, and we’re all together, and you’re not alone, no matter what happens, no matter what was said or what you heard, that guy’s an idiot," Lovullo said.
When Daniel Wann saw the video of what happened, as a sports fan, he says he was sad for the player and the world of sports. Wann says it’s obvious Marte’s response was real and intense, which shows how damaging the fan’s comment had been.
Wann is a distinguished professor of psychology at Murray State University, where he’s studied the psychology of sports fans for about four decades. He says, as an academic, he felt disgusted. Even though incidents like these are rare, he says, even one is too many.
Wann joined The Show to discuss if this kind of thing is becoming more common.
Full conversation
DANIEL WANN: Yeah, wouldn't it be great if we had those statistics, but they, they really don't exist, and I'll tell you why. Everybody's been to a, a sporting event where somebody in the stands has yelled something that probably crossed the line.
No one's sitting there with a counter in their hand. Are the numbers going up? Well, I mean, I think those of us in the academic world would probably argue that they are for reasons such as, as a society, we're less civil than we used to be.
Well, if society is less civil, why wouldn't sports fans be less so? If it seems like it's happening more often, there's a, there's theoretical reasons as to why that is probably the case.
MARK BRODIE: What is the line between, for example, booing for the team that your team is playing against and not going too far? Is it just a matter of, for example, like rooting against the team and not rooting against or yelling things at individual players?
WANN: That's such a great question, and I really do think that there's no clear answer to that question, and it does break down based on perhaps the age of the athlete, the competition level.
So for example, I think that most individuals would take the stance that booing a ref's decision or the opposing players not getting personal, just booing is probably OK and, you know, within the confines of sporting events.
Well, OK. Is that actually true if it's a Little League baseball game? Probably not. So, you know, we, we do have sort of qualifiers here.
I think the moment that you say something that is personal and that you would be upset if you were said that or if a friend was said, that was said to them, I think that, you know, you know, at that point you've probably crossed the line. If you say anything threatening. Are you saying something that you would not want your child to hear? Then you're probably saying something that shouldn't be said.
BRODIE: So I wonder though, like, because, you know, a lot of fans will say that part of their quote unquote job at a game is to rattle the, the other team, rattle the visiting team. So like, is it considered OK to point out a player's flaws in the game?
You know, if a player has a bad batting average, for example, is it OK to say, “hey, you know, you're a terrible hitter”? I mean, I'm sure a fan would say something far more creative than that, as opposed to saying something about them as a human being or about their family or something like that.
WANN: I think that's where, where you draw the line, right? So if a player's struggling, you know, fans are gonna remind the player that, “hey, you haven't had a hit in two weeks,” or something. And I think that the players, they're like, “OK, that's a part of my job and my job is in the public eye. So, you know, that kind of stuff is, is fair game.”
The second it becomes personal, the second it becomes vulgar, the second it becomes threatening. That's again where I think the line has to get drawn. You, you can't say things to players that you wouldn't feel comfortable saying to somebody else, like in your family or or or someone else on the street. That's, that's, you know, that's just not appropriate.
It unfortunately becomes a part of these spectacles, but that doesn't make it OK.
BRODIE: I have to ask about the impact you think that alcohol plays into this because pretty much any sporting event you go to, there's a lot of beer.
WANN: Yeah, anybody who thinks that alcohol doesn't play a role in this is really kidding themselves. You know, this is one of those topics when I discussed it in my class.
It's, it's under the category of the, goodness how many studies do we have to do, right? And how much data do we have to have before people understand that, you know, it's a complicated relationship, but at the end of the day, alcohol has the ability to facilitate aggression and, and, you know, overly assertive responses and things like that.
And we, if we think that alcohol doesn't matter, I mean, that's when you say as a scientist, well, if I can't get you to buy into that, pretty much nothing else I'm gonna say is really gonna matter, right? If you don't, if you, if you can't, you know, get on board with the obvious things, then after that, you know, we're just gonna have a hard time getting along at all.
BRODIE: I want to ask you about different sports because the situation with Ketel Marte obviously happened at a baseball stadium, but there are other sports where fans and players are much closer together in proximity, and I think about at many NBA arenas where there are basically fans sitting on or right next to the bench or right behind the bench, the access to players seems much greater.
Do you see, and again, understanding there are no real statistics on this, but are some sports maybe more subjected to this than others?
WANN: Well, I think that certainly every sport has had its unfortunate instances of these things happening. The one thing I will say about baseball is that relative to hockey and to, to football and to basketball, there is quite frankly, a lot of downtime.
But this is still time where the players are on the field. Think about the, the 1.5 minutes to 2 minutes in between innings. The players in the outfield are, are, you know, playing catch and loosening up their arms. The, the crowd is not into the game, so to speak, the, you know, there's not a whole lot going on, so things can be said that can be heard. That's a long time and plenty of opportunity for fans to, to say things that they shouldn't say.
Think about a basketball game. Yeah, there are some timeouts that occur, but by and large, there are fewer and further between. And, you know, the, the, the organs are playing these inside stadiums are, are louder and the, the, the sound is resonating.
It's easier at a baseball game for a fan to pick a time to yell out to a player who's on the field and get that player's attention.
BRODIE: You alluded to the reaction in this case of Ketel Marte of the Diamondbacks, but I want to ask you more broadly about how players are responding to this, and I wonder if there's maybe a generational thing happening because, you know, you hear a lot of, I, I hate to use this phrase, old time baseball players because they were playing when I was a kid who are now, you know, broadcasters or retired, but they'll talk about, especially pitchers, for example, you hear, you know, them talk about the kinds of things that they heard yelled at them when they're warming up in the bullpen, and they kind of laugh it off and joke about some of the horrible things that people said to them.
Are you seeing a change in players sort of in some way maybe being allowed to respond more genuinely like Ketel Marte did to what's being yelled at them and it being seen as less OK by other fans and maybe even the teams themselves that fans say these kinds of things to the players?
WANN: I hope so, right? I, I hope that one thing that might come out of this is that players begin to realize that they haven't already, that, you know what, these things, not only are they off-limits and inappropriate, they also shouldn't happen.
So those are two different things, right? It's, it's one thing to say, well, I can't believe that a fan would yell that, but it's a part of being a professional athlete. It's different to say, well, I can't believe the fan yelled that, and I want that fan gone and banned for life. And, and I have to hope that that's where we're headed with this.
So I'm hoping that, you know, if anything is to come from this, that would be a positive side would be that the, the leagues and, and the players are like, OK, look, you know, we, we get that, that things are gonna be said, but there has to be things that we all can acknowledge are, are beyond the bounds of, of what is acceptable.
