Friday, June 27, 2025

Yes, there is.

It's the most famous line from A League Of Their Own, the movie about women's baseball...Tom Hanks saying, "There's no crying in baseball!"

Actually, there is, and there will be, as long as humans play the game.

On Tuesday, the Arizona Diamondbacks were playing the Chicago White Sox, and during a 7th-inning pitching change, people noticed that something was wrong with Diamondbacks 2nd baseman Ketel Marte. During the pause in action, he was seen crying on the field. His manager, Torey Lovullo, talked to him on the mound with consoling words and an arm around the shoulder. Lovullo told him he loved him.

What was wrong? It couldn't have been a missed play or an error. No, some knucklehead was hollering about Marte's dead mother, Elpidia Valdez, who died in a car wreck in the Dominican Republic in 2017. That's about as low-grade as one can be.


When Lovullo got back to the dugout, he was able to identify the fan, and signaled to the ushers to remove him, which they did, and as of today the still-unidentified jerk is banned from all ballparks. The White Sox are to be commended for throwing out the trash.

It's sad, but this is all part of that "I'm the tenth man" in baseball, or the 12th man in football, this feeling that as a fan, one should be able to affect play on the field by actions taken while sitting in the stands with a beer in one hand and...something else...in the other.

Hurting someone's feelings should not be a goal.


 

No comments: