Bet Your Life? Threats Against Players are on the Rise

Picture this scenario if you will: After a long day at work, you come home eager to relax. It was a tough one – maybe you made a big mistake on a spreadsheet, perhaps you spilled food on a customer. Whatever the case may be, now you’re home and can hopefully put the mishap behind you.

But then you find out that because of your workplace error, somebody wants you dead. Not only that, but they also said they would kill your spouse and children. How would that make you feel?

Well, that’s exactly what happened to Houston Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr earlier this season. After a rocky outing, he discovered that he and his family received online death threats. In what can be described as a pretty big understatement, McCullers said: “I understand people are very passionate and people love the Astros and love sports, but threatening to find my kids and murder them is a little bit tough to deal with.”

The pitcher went on to say that he’s actually had many threats aimed at him over the years, and he’s far from the only one. Boston Red Sox pitcher Liam Hendriks – who is a cancer survivor – had to endure comments from people wishing that the disease had killed him. He also revealed that his wife has received online threats.

Online abuse is something many players have to deal with, said Christian Yelich of the Milwaukee Brewers, and it’s only getting worse. “I think over the last few years it’s definitely increased,” he said. “It’s increased to the point that you’re just: ‘All right, here we go.’ It doesn’t even really register on your radar anymore. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. You’re just so used to that on a day-to-day, night-to-night basis. It’s not just me. It’s everybody in here, based on performance.”

So, why are threats increasing? Why would somebody get so enraged about a baseball game that they would publicly threaten to murder somebody? If you guessed it was about money, you win a prize. In McCullers’ case, the guy who made the threats bet on the game in which he started, and he was so upset that the pitcher cost him some money that he decided to show his displeasure by potentially committing a felony. (The only thing that seemed to save him from any charges was the fact that he was located outside of the U.S. He was drunk too, apparently.)

Red Sox reliever Justin Wilson believes threats are directly related to betting. “You get a lot of DMs or stuff like that about you ruining someone’s bet or something ridiculous like that,” he said. “I guess they should make better bets.”

Now that everybody can walk around with a casino in their pocket, it seems as though no sports – or athletes – are safe. British tennis player Katie Boulter also recently received threatening comments from disgruntled bettors, with one mentioning “candles and a coffin” for her family. Plus, players don’t even have to be professional; a report from the NCAA found that one-third of high-profile college athletes have received “abusive messages from someone with a betting interest.”

And betting isn’t the only thing players have to worry about. In addition, they have to deal with online trolls because of fantasy leagues. Maybe they didn’t get participants enough points – or maybe they got too many points for guys they were playing against. Said Houston Texans tight end Dalton Schultz of the threats he’s received: “Some of them are bad. I don’t know if I can say them all. I’ve gotten death threats for sure, over fantasy.”

The biggest problem appears to be that the guys (and let’s face it – it’s mostly men) who are involved in endeavors with the potential for a payday don’t see athletes as real people. They see them as video game avatars who are just there to potentially make them money. They also don’t seem to understand that no player wants to fail or play badly – they go out every day to do their best.

So, is there a solution for combatting cruel and often illegal online vitriol? Unfortunately, unless law enforcement believes that something will become more than just an empty threat, they’re probably not going to do anything. Let’s just hope that it doesn’t take an act of physical violence against a player before measures are put in place to hold these idiots accountable.