Barb Caffrey's Blog

Folks, most of you who’ve read this blog for any length of time know I’m a baseball fan. And while my favorite team is the Milwaukee Brewers (always has been), my heart goes out to players who’ve suffered from life.

Take the Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte, for example. Most people wouldn’t know he’s suffered loss, as he often smiles, laughs, and jokes around on the field…but recently, a fan heckled him in Chicago and it upset him dearly.

While I don’t know exactly what was said, Marte’s mother was invoked. It was apparently far beyond a “your Mama wears combat boots” type of insult, which most MLB players have heard since their days in Little League. My guess is it went like this: “It’s a good thing your mother’s already dead, considering what you just did.”

That’s wrong. It shouldn’t have happened.

See, Marte’s mother died in 2017. He still grieves for her. She died in a car accident, which means it was a sudden and completely unexpected death.

Marte is now thirty-one years old. He’s still a young man. But most of his success in major league baseball has come after the death of his mother, and that’s been very hard on him.

Maybe some of you are thinking, “He’s making big money. Why should I care?”

You should care because you’re a human being and you’ve likely suffered loss yourself.

I know that I understand how he feels. If someone heckled me about my late husband, I’d be first livid and then later very sad. It’s hard to stay above such personal insults. It hits you on a raw spot, even years later.

As for the unnamed fan, he’s been indefinitely banned by not just the White Sox, but by the entirety of MLB.

Baseball players are human beings. Their careers are often quite short. The money they make seems nice on its face, but there are a lot of trade-offs that come with that money, including constant travel, the potential for serious injury, the loss of time with their families, and much more. It’s not a job most people would want if they considered all the downsides, including possible interactions like with this dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks fan.

Most baseball fans have reacted the way I have, whether they’ve lost someone close to them or not. They know that insults like that are not acceptable and cannot be tolerated by civilized human beings.

I really wish everyone would try to remember that we only get this one life to live. We should approach people with dignity and respect as much as possible.

So if you’re going to yell insults at a baseball player or other athlete, stick with how they’re playing. Leave the parents, spouses, children, etc., out of it.

But better yet, don’t heckle at all. Life is too short for that.