THE POLITICS OF BOOING

On April 25, 2016, Detroit Tigers outfielder Tyler Collins flipped fans the bird.

After he lost a routine fly ball in the lights at home field, fans at Comerica Park responded to Collins’s minor mistake with a hearty chorus of boos. Collins retaliated to the derision with the standard obscene gesture and, if you believe the lip reading, a hearty “fuck everybody here, fuck them all.” (For what it’s worth, the Tigers went on to win against the Oakland A’s, 7–3.)

After the game, Collins of course effusively apologized, because that’s what professional athletes are supposed to do. “I’m absolutely embarrassed that happened and I’m very sorry to everybody in Detroit,” he said. (The idea of everybody in Detroit being offended is kind of hilarious, if you ask me.) While Major League Baseball decided not to suspend Collins for his little outburst, he was subsequently demoted to Triple-A, a decision that, given his generally poor performance at the time, probably didn’t have a huge amount to do with his middle-finger shenanigans. In fact, the Tigers even came out and said as much.

Because baseball is a game where everyone has an opinion, and those opinions constantly fill our feeds and airwaves, there was a lot of discussion of how it was a big deal that Collins “disrespected fans” with his middle finger. Many said that he should have been stoic, stood there quietly, accepted thousands booing his understandable slip up, and not disgraced the game with his unabashed obscenity. But beyond whether or not the middle finger is naughty, I’ve thought a lot about how this incident speaks to a culture of fan entitlement and, if I may, the “politics of booing.”

I loathe the act of booing. Almost every time it happens during a game, whether I’m in the stadium or watching on television, I find it cringeworthy and grotesque. In extreme cases, it’s done for the most nonsensical reasons imaginable—a default, groupthink reaction without any thought toward its own ridiculousness. For example, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why, when former Blue Jay Brett Lawrie returned to the Rogers Centre after being traded, he was worthy of a liberal booing during his first at-bat. Is he a traitor because he was exchanged for our American League MVP third baseman, Josh Donaldson? Do we hate him because we’re “supposed to”? (To be honest, that would be hard for me, because he’s such a ridiculous delight.) Beyond it simply being mean, it seems to me that booing is often the laziest, most robotic fan response, primarily used by ballpark-goers who don’t really care about baseball—or basic kindness—and who only care about winning at all costs.

The month after Collins made his gaffe, Blue Jays pitcher Brett Cecil—who was getting a substantial booing of his own, courtesy of fair-weather fans—spoke to the press about his thoughts on the ugly reception. “One thing I will say,” Cecil told Postmedia. “If you’re going to boo me, don’t cheer me when I’m pitching good.” Cecil’s throwaway comment is actually one weighted with meaning, getting to the heart of what fandom should be all about: stick with your guys, even when they’re struggling.

On rare occasions, I do find a hearty boo understandable. I get why it happens during egregiously unfair ump calls, or when players are deliberately hit with pitches, or during almost-balks and repeated pickoff attempts. I certainly empathize with booing a player who has committed actual heinous, criminal acts off the field, or when it’s a genuine reply to bullshit plays or bad behaviour. We all get excited and emotional sometimes, and we can be forgiven for that. But generally I find the act of booing, especially your own team, the worst kind of fan entitlement.

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I have long thought that we collectively demand far too much from baseball players. We demand their time via the media, autograph sessions, and scheduled public appearances. We demand that their sole focus always be on winning, regardless of what is happening in their lives. (Birth of child? Sick relative? Who cares!) For some reason, we think that because we spend our leisure time on baseball, those on the field owe us something more than a game played. We act like players deserve a higher level of abuse—and a lower level of dignity—just because they get paid a lot of money to do something they love.

Not many people think about the fact that it probably doesn’t feel very good for a player (who is likely already disappointed in himself) to stand in a stadium and be booed at, just as not many people think of elite athletes as actual human beings. We ask for their best performance every single game, despite the fact that, logically, that’s impossible. Booing represents a belief that because we paid some money for a ticket and a beer, we’re allowed to scold someone who is slumping. Perhaps even more important, booing suggests they don’t deserve our support when they’re facing difficulty.

Further, the fact that the status quo argument is that players shouldn’t respond but should just “take it,” lest they be accused of disrespecting a group of drunk jerks who paid a few bucks for the pleasure of demoralizing another human being, makes me livid. I’m not saying that Collins had a right to say “fuck you” during a nationally televised event (think of the children, blah blah blah), but the fact that the blame was placed solely on his refusal to be a fan punching-bag is a pretty sad commentary on what we think the rights of the average ballpark patron are.

“They have no idea, and that’s kind of the part that angers me. A lot of people don’t understand the preparation that goes into a lot of pro sports, yet they feel entitled to do stupid stuff like that,” Brett Cecil told Postmedia of his own experience with being booed. “Those are the types of things that bother me…they don’t know the hard work that we as a team and we as individuals put in and yet they still do stupid stuff.”

This widespread impulse to turn on one’s own team is probably one of the things I hate most about sports. No one is ever allowed to make a mistake, or have a slow couple of weeks, or they’ll be rejected by the masses in a chorus of “get rid of him.” When I’m at a game and I have to listen to some guy behind me drone on and on about how we should fire John Gibbons, or that Brett Cecil sucks and should be cut, or that R.A. Dickey is garbage and totally done, I’m filled with a kind of raging sadness.

Maybe it’s my fault for loving these guys so much, for caring about them through good times and bad, even if I don’t know them personally. But despite the fact that these men are just strangers to me, I don’t think they—or anyone else, really—deserve to be insulted, mocked, or booed by the masses, no matter how much money they earn. Because there’s no mistake that can be made on the field, no performance so bad, no loss so disappointing that it hurts me more than listening to a “fellow fan” gratuitously insult my team’s players. Sure, I don’t think someone like Collins should flip off thousands of fans, but I don’t think he should be sacrificed on an apologetic altar of “respecting the game” either.