They say there’s no crying in baseball, but there was some crying last week. An Arizona Diamondbacks player named Ketel Marte was seen visibly shaken, tears falling down his face, during a pitching change of a game Tuesday night in Chicago.
The reason? A fan had been screaming insulting things about Marte’s mother, who died in a car crash in 2017. The comments, first screamed when Marte was at-bat, affected him so badly that he teared up while playing second base, and was hugged during that pitching change by his manager, Torey Lovullo.
Lovullo later told the media what he said to his player: “I love you and I’m with you, and we’re all together, and you’re not alone. And no matter what happens, no matter what was said or what you heard, that guy’s an idiot and shouldn’t have an impact on you.”
Now, we shouldn’t have to print a single sentence about the incredible boorishness of this “fan,” a 22-year-old man who has since been banned from all major league ballparks.
We shouldn’t have to declare that yelling things about any player’s mother, let alone one who died tragically, is beyond insensitive, beyond stupid and almost beyond words.
But let’s take a moment to address not the hateful comments, but the reaction.
Let’s talk about crying.
Men of a certain age in America were raised to believe that crying is inappropriate. That you have to suck it up. Deal with things. Don’t let the world see you weep.
I was raised by a man of that generation, and I suppose I absorbed that message, too. For many years, I didn’t cry when others did. I knew to look somber at funerals, during hospital visits, at the breaking of sudden bad news. But I kept my eyes dry.
I am hardly alone. Not long ago, I met a man in his mid-50s named Damion Cooper, who runs a youth program in Baltimore. He told me of being shot as a teenager at point-blank range. But even as he lay bleeding, nearing death, he told himself he couldn’t cry in front of those trying to help him, he had to hold it back.
Yet when he told me his story, decades later, he choked up quickly, even though he was now safe and healthy.
What changed? Age, maybe? Loss? I find I cry a good deal these days, not just out of sadness but from joy or nostalgia. So many things leave my eyes moist: a child crawling in my lap, an old video of my deceased parents, heck, even sappy commercials. When I take kids to a Pixar movie, I inevitably get teary-eyed at some emotional moment near the end. Really? A cartoon movie?
Maybe it’s maturity. Or maybe, like brakes on a car, a man’s resistance scrapes down over the years. But at some point, perhaps when you’ve buried your parents, or gone through a medical scare, or when you start to feel that’s there’s much less life in front of you than there is behind you, the dam breaks. You choke up. You let it go.
And you know what? It doesn’t kill you. Quite the opposite. It is cathartic. A wise old professor once told me, “Crying doesn’t come out of sadness. It comes out of deep feeling.”
If so, then to plug up tears is to deny your own feelings. Ask yourself, “Why would I do that?” It’s hard to come up with a good answer.
There was strong debate on social media after the Ketel Marte incident. Most people rushed to his defense and lambasted the heckler. But some questioned whether a professional baseball player should let comments like that get to him.
After all, it is hardly the first time a fan has yelled derogatory things about a mother, a wife, or any number of personal issues. If players started crying every time something nasty was hollered, a game might never finish.
But that’s not going to happen. And the rare time that it does, we should be empathetic. Obviously, Marte was feeling something powerful. Perhaps it was a memory. Perhaps an event in his life was making him think of his mother just when the fan started in on her. Perhaps, at that moment, he just missed her. Missing lost loved ones, I have found, hits you like a rogue wave. You can’t predict it. But you can’t escape it.
Besides, we welcome a whole clock’s worth of emotions in sports. Exultation. Angry howls. Helmet smashes. Champagne dousing. We even welcome tears, if they come with winning or the agony of defeat, a player with a towel over his head on the losing bench.
Yet somehow, you can’t cry on the field when someone insults your deceased mother?
Men don’t weep. There’s no crying in baseball. And yet there was. And it didn’t ruin anything. On the contrary, it kind of brought people together.
What’s bad about that?
Mittch Albom - Detroit Free Press
