A Discussion on Civility: A Seattle Sports Story

The Mariners' media ecosphere was in high gear tonight over comments by their struggling DH made after the game.

It's probably the hardest I've ever had to grind. This is by far the worst I've ever played in my career. Tough on myself and my family with the death threats, the 'retire' and 'you suck' and 'fucking kill yourself' and all that shit. It's getting old. The only way I change it is if I play better, but it's like continuing right now. So the worse, I play more here. And rightfully so. I'm not playing well.

I've already accepted the fact that I'm not going to hit above .200 this year. And I don't know. It might not get better. Who knows? Maybe it just gets worse. I don't know. But I show up to the field every day prepared to play, prepared to get better and work hard and control what I can control. And the people out there that say certain things they say whatever they want. I think I bring a lot to this team.

I've never quit anything. Certainly, not going to quit this. They're gonna have to rip the jersey off my back. That's fine. That's an easy way out. I could happily retire right now, go home and live a great life with my family. That's not what I do. I made a two-year commitment to this team. They believe in me, my teammates believe in me. So it's a matter of just making it click and when it does good things will happen."

Source

Per Divish, several other Mariners players reported the same experience.

We (as Kraken fans) have already run into issues with fans targeting the Wennbergs. I understand the booktok phenomenon reaches beyond Kraken fans, but we don't want to get a reputation for this sort of thing.

I think we need to be sensitive to this kind of stuff if we want Seattle to be a destination team, where players want to sign without us overpaying. We're a no income tax state, but we don't have great weather. We don't have a long legacy to lean on, we have a long distance travel schedule (compared to the Eastern conference). We need any advantage we can get to attract talent.

There's only so much we (as fans) can do from outside the organization. We can spend our dollars. We can show up, be loud, and create a good game environment… But one big thing we can control is what reception the players receive from the fans.

I've observed a marked uptick in negative and combative comments from year 1 to year 2, and much worse to year 3. Comments are often targeted at underperforming players and they can get nasty at times. The players and their families see that stuff, whether it's on here, or on Twitter, Instagram, or wherever. And it makes them uncomfortable. And players talk. Teams absolutely do get reputations.

I'm not telling anyone how to be a fan. There's nothing wrong with being respectfully critical. But please remember these players are humans with lives outside the game. And think hard about whether your messages and comments would help or hurt our reputation among players.

70 days.