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A recent poll of Major League Baseball players revealed that 78.2 percent of them feel that legalized sports betting has negatively affected how fans treat them and their teammates. Fans have gotten more aggressive, especially on social media where a lost bet can result in a player and his family getting death threats.
One veteran relief pitcher said he has gotten messages telling him that if he didn’t send him the money a fan lost in a bet that fan would “find his family.” Another said fans will yell things at him in the bullpen as he warms up, reminding him that they have bet on him.
Houston Astros pitcher Lance McCullers, Jr. returned to the mound this May after missing 915 days due to injury. After just his second start in his return, he had a bad outing and a fan made death threats against him and his kids.
Boston Red Sox reliever Liam Hendricks, making his return from missing almost two full seasons due to cancer and Tommy John surgery, pitched just 11.1 innings when he and his wife were subjected to numerous hate comments and death threats.
Earlier this month, Yankees pitcher Carlos Rodon’s wife Ashley also called out fans who were making death threats on social media.
Things have gotten so bad for MLB players that the Minnesota Twins have a point man on their staff to specifically deal with all of the threats. The man in charge of assessing these threats and finding the people behind them is a former Minneapolis police officer, Charles Adams.
Adams, the Twins’ director of security, recently told The Athletic about how during one recent game pitcher Bailey Ober was having a bad outing when his wife received a message on her phone from an unknown person telling her to watch her back.
“It’s pretty common — definitely with pitchers,” Adams said. “Sadly, it is a postgame routine. The players’ wives are pretty responsive and pretty on top of things. The players, they’re good at communication, and that’s the whole thing about having a relationship with guys. ‘Hey, if this happens, get ahold of me.’ If that comes, they just know.”
When it does happen, Adams says he meets with the player, files a report, then works with members of the Twins’ social media team and a local MLB security representative to assess the severity of the threats and attempt to identity of the person making the threat.
In Lance McCullers’ case with the Astros, the team notified both the Houston Police Department and Major League Baseball about the threats made against McCullers and his family. The police were then able to identify the fan, who would go on to apologize to the pitcher, and determined that he was “frustrated and inebriated when he lashed out on social media.”
Thankfully, that’s all that came of those threats, but as one pitcher who The Athletic polled warned, eventually “someone’s going to lose a bunch of money and track down somebody in a parking lot.”