Somewhere in between the pandemic shutting down fan attendance for sports and today, I think a lot of fans have forgotten about the privilege of attending sports games. I’m all for heckling, but some fans have taken it too far and say some really hurtful things about these athletes.
Arizona Diamondbacks’ second baseman Ketel Marte was the latest victim of incredibly harmful things said to him by a fan during the Diamondbacks’ game against the Chicago White Sox:
The fan was ejected, and has since been banned from all MLB stadiums, according to ESPN.
A fan has been banned indefinitely from all MLB ballparks after yelling something about Diamondbacks second baseman Ketel Marte’s late mother during Tuesday night’s game against the Chicago White Sox, a source told @JesseRogersESPN.https://t.co/gAsgJvmOMv
— ESPN (@espn) June 25, 2025
It’s in these times that it’s important to remember that these people are human. Marte lost his mom in a car accident eight years ago, a traumatic and horrific situation all around, but the fact that a fan can yell something so insulting about his mother that it makes Marte cry is a terrible indicator that we’ve taken being a fan way too far.
In a world where athletes get DMs calling them everything but their names (most of the time about some parlay, which brings another nasty aspect into this), heckling getting extremely personal, and on the biggest social media app in the world an athlete can get called slurs in broad daylight, there don’t seem to be many solutions to protecting the mental health of these athletes.
There is one solution, however: we need another Malice at the Palace. We need a fan to get their ass whooped one good time and I bet you all of this stuff goes away so quickly. In fact, players should be allowed to go into the stands and beat a fan up if they say something like this to them.
Marte deserves better. Athletes deserve better.
