MILWAUKEE — When Kyle Wright pitched poorly as he struggled to find his footing in the majors, he received ruthless messages and comments on social media. So many people hurled many different insults.
One common one, more brutal than the rest, went something like this: “Go kill yourself.”
Thus, Wright has learned about another side of his job, one that has nothing to do with spotting his curveball or keeping hitters off-balance. Wright and his peers face a challenge many of those who played before them never did: social media’s dark side. It allows anyone and everyone to have a voice, even those who decide to remain anonymous.
MLB players perform in front of thousands each night at the ballpark, and for millions watching on television or listening on the radio. They are front and center in society, for all to criticize. And this has forced them to find ways to deal with social media and the negativity on it.
“You got to be able to separate real life and the game, but you also have to understand this is what we do, this is a job, and people are rooting for you, they want you to do well,” Wright said. “You can’t feel like you’re attacked when things like that happen.”
Social media is prevalent in today’s society. People use Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and more to connect with friends and family, to follow news, to share opinions and more.
This brings up a question: How do professional baseball players, people with front-facing jobs and thousands of followers on social media, handle all of this?
“Not seeing it, not going to social media. That’s how I handle it,” Kenley Jansen said. “If you go on social media, you’re going to kill yourself because there’s going to be a lot of burner accounts just calling you a bunch of names and stuff.”
“You have to either choose not to be on it too much or you have to choose not to try and digest it,” Collin McHugh said.
“I try not to look at the bad stuff,” Ian Anderson said. “I know it’s out there. Nowadays, there’s definitely people that have more of an avenue to say what they want.”
Multiple players interviewed for this story mentioned that they understand fans are passionate. “Fandom is not always a rational place to live,” McHugh said. He would know, he added. He is a fan of many things, and understands how easy it can be to forget those he’s rooting for have difficult jobs and won’t always be perfect.
McHugh’s No. 1 rule for Twitter is this: Don’t tweet. Write it down on a piece of paper or in a phone, then delete it. Do whatever. But he’s realized the risk of tweeting can be high, especially when doing a job in which perfection is impossible. Keep the distractions to a minimum.
“If you’re looking at it after a bad outing, you’re probably going to be in a more likely position to take it personally or let it irritate you,” McHugh said. “It goes back to my first rule: If you’re going to look on there when you’re doing well, try and be active on social media at all, then you’ve got to be aware that there’s always going to be a downside to it. There’s always going to be a dark side, if you will, about people feeling a little bit more willing and able to say what they want to say (because) of the (anonymity) behind that.”
After poor performances and gut-wrenching losses, angry fans will flood players with insults and backlash. Some are merely fueled by their disappointment over defeat. Others, as Anderson noted, might be furious at players who caused them to lose their bets that night.
Jansen learned to stay off social media in 2018. He used to like reading articles on his off days, but he began to become frustrated when people wrote things that were inaccurate, or when there were nasty comments on those stories. Former teammate Chase Utley had warned him about the dangers of all of this, but Jansen didn’t truly get it until it began to bother him. Now he finds other ways to spend his time off, like being with his family. He keeps his focus on the field.
Wright doesn’t use Twitter anymore, unless someone sends him a funny tweet. With Instagram, he said, he can better filter what he sees and what’s sent to him. He has tried to disconnect from social media by spending more time with his wife, dog and friends.
Anderson doesn’t look for anything. “If you’re second-guessing how a game went or things like that, all it takes is one little search and you can find whatever you want to find,” he said. “I kind of just know that going into it, so I’m just not going to bother with it.”
But here is something a couple of these players brought up: Social media can have positives. It isn’t inherently bad.
Anderson said it provides players a chance to create a personal brand and connect with fans. Wright said “everyone ultimately means well” and that he feels “like you don’t want to look at the world as a negative place.”
But social media, and all that comes with it, can be a distraction for players whose job is to flush bad outings and move on to the next day.
“Everyone has their own threshold of what they feel like they can take or want to take, or how much they want to put of themselves and their families out there,” McHugh said.
For example, McHugh recently posted something about his travels and the cities he’s visited since the season began. He wanted to remind his family and friends he’s still a person who travels, someone living out his dream of playing baseball.
And it seems players have tried to come to a certain understanding with social media: It’s not real life.
“It’s not real,” Jansen said. “You understand there’s going to be miserable people sometimes that want to be in your situation, that want to have what you’ve got. I get it. I want them to succeed, too, I want them to get what I got, too. It’s tough. Sometimes this world, sometimes you can say it’s unfair how it is. Why do we make this much, why do they make that much? It’s a never-ending story.”
Social media allows anyone to say anything. Many upset fans wouldn’t toss these obscenities at players in person, though. McHugh said players often joke about how the people insulting players online often will ask for autographs and pictures in person. This goes back to one of McHugh’s mottos, that “people are hard to hit close up.”
In the end, it seems players must simply accept social media’s downsides. The hate. The anger. The insults.
MLB players are public figures, and this comes with the territory.
“We are human beings, so there are some things that people may not realize that we deal with,” Wright said. “But we get to play a game for a living. It’s part of it. You wear it and try to be better, I guess.”
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