July 30, 2017. While in a hotel room waiting to play the Cubs the next day, Ketel Marte received a call informing him that his mother, Elpidia Valdez, had been killed in a car accident in his hometown of Nizao in the Dominican Republic.
The news hit him as you’d expect it to hit a 24-year-old whose mother was the inspiration in getting him to America to begin a life in MLB. So even almost eight years removed from that date, Chicago has to hold a certain place in Marte’s soul. Every visit here to play either the White Sox or the Cubs has to have a certain weight attached to it.
So when a “fan” decided to yell at Marte, “I sent your mom a text last night,” it triggered not only his emotional response, it activated a deep-seated grief that exists in all of us who’ve lost our moms. So you can only imagine how that must feel having to unexpectedly deal with the raw sadness in front of 20,000 people.
Marte’s incident is far from isolated. In April, another “fan” in the stands in Cleveland hurled at Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran, “You should have killed yourself when you had the chance.” Duran dealt with mental-health issues and attempted suicide three years ago. And we won’t even get into what Caitlin Clark fans have been heard screaming at opposing players during games or the death threats Nico Harrison still receives anytime he steps out in public after the Mavericks traded Luka Doncic.
Yeah, this is how we livin’.
Not saying that fans’ crossing the line when it comes to athlete engagement has gone too far, but the fans have gotten too comfortable in their ignorance. Damn human rights, damn being human. Etiquette, decorum, civility? Gone. The guardrails have been removed, and society truly believes in the “pay and say” system as much as we do the “pay to play” one. Some fans have the mentality of, “If I pay for this seat, I can say any damn thing I please to whomever I please.”
Hate has no fury like a fan privileged.
In France it’s Le client n’a jamais tort (‘‘The customer is never wrong’’), in Japan it’s Okyakusama wa kamisama desu (‘‘The customer is a god’’), in Germany it’s Der Kunde ist König (‘‘The customer is king’’). Here in these United States it’s “The customer is always right.”
And it’s this ideology, started here in Chicago by Marshall Field, believe it or not, that has been the epicenter for a sports fan’s perceived right to inject into their everyday being. Not just transferring themselves into customers to fit the description in the sayings, but adding they “have rights” to do or say whatever they want to the “zoo animals” paid to entertain them. With their ticket stub or VIP wristband, fans believe they’ve paid the cost to be the boss.
And that “boss energy” gives them, in their twisted, non compos mentis minds, the right to cross the line of public verbal abuse against players bordering on inhumane. Between social media and the open rules on sports betting and gambling, the hinges have been totally removed from any form of respect or decency. Nothing and no athlete or their circumstance is off limits anymore.
What’s worse is that there is no legal punishment appropriate enough to neutralize their unhinged insensitivity. The question is: Did sports cause this in society, or did society bring this behavior to sports?
When “Get your ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ merch on Amazon! Caps, T-shirts, beverage cooler! We got you!” becomes a thing, and “Let’s celebrate the Diddy verdict outside of the courtroom by pouring baby oil on one another!” becomes the representation of the people, you start to wonder who gave whom the embolden-ness to act this way first?
I remember being at the NBA game in 1995 in Portland when Vernon Maxwell went into the stands to punch a fan who was unmercifully calumniating Maxwell’s daughter for almost three quarters. What gets lost in that story — and what Maxwell doesn’t even remember himself because he blanked out after the man wouldn’t stop and security refused to do anything because the fan “pays money” for those 100-level seats (translation: he’s a customer) — was the man saying, “. . . that’s why your daughter died of SIDS” to Maxwell, who had just buried his daughter a few hours before the flight to the game. Yet, Maxwell was the one who was fined $20,000 and suspended for 10 games. At the time, it was the second-longest suspension in NBA history, and it matched the largest fine.
Yet, Der Kunde ist König?
But Marte’s incident hit differently because unfortunately the fan got the reaction that he hoped to cause. To him, losing access to all MLB fields and games was probably worth it just to know that he was able to affect Marte in the way that he did. He’s probably sitting at home, watching all of the videos of the Diamondbacks players and manager consoling Marte on Rate Field, with the jerk saying to himself, “Yeah, I did that.”
There should be room for an eighth deadly sin.
Life tells us repeatedly, “God don’t like ugly.” But what happens when all of the devil’s children are season-ticket holders?
