Social Media Ragging... LONG

After reading this, I'm thinking, if I were a college coach I'd demand that my players get rid of their social media, because of Murphy's Law.

Social media is narcissistic horse manure.

Welcome to college baseball. My son said one particular set of fans was so funny ripping on him he really had to focus on the game and not pay attention to them. He dished it back without being personal while throwing between innings. When the weekend was over he smiled and thanked them for the entertainment.

After a while the players have heard it all. A lot of the insults are generic. Make an error and you'll hear about it. Look bad at the plate and you'll hear about it. 

My son had changed his first name on his Facebook account to Ismail. His friends knew. They thought it was funny. Somehow a couple of opposing team's fans found out.

The fans don't need Facebook to ride a player. They will find something ...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OAvTKUDzE6c

freddy77 posted:

After reading this, I'm thinking, if I were a college coach I'd demand that my players get rid of their social media, because of Murphy's Law.

Social media is narcissistic horse manure.

Social media used properly is fine. The problem is when egos get in the way and the fingers move before the brain shifts into gear.

People don't need social media to find buttons. Other team figured out my son was a freshman at some point during his first varsity outing and were pretty merciless. He pitched well, but I was very grateful the field was next to a train track that was regularly used and drowned them out. And now he's fine with whatever comes his way.

The poor visiting right fielder at Swayze field at Ole Miss!  "Students study up to three hours" to bone up on the visiting players, their moms, girlfriends, etc.   I would provide a link, but there were too many on google, and not many clean.  The have "rules" for the student out field section.   

Here is a link to what happens when the Rebels hit a home run:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYZnizAAeP4

Great atmosphere for baseball....even the heckling.  Glad I got to see it in my lifetime.

I take it the OP was referring to a college game?  

I think my son understands his responsibility of his social media accounts, not much FB anymore...that's for old folks, he has twitter and insta. I would like to add that his school/team media manager regularly "guides" them on etiquette while representing the team/program and school. 

I will say he hasn't always been as trustworthy in that he never makes the mortal sins we all hear about, just things that are funny to him and friends who some would question and ultimately misapply. Now those are rarely if ever posted. 

Regarding the students "data-mining" opponents accounts, my son pitched his 1st home game as a Sr. vs the #1 team in the country/nation/solar system a few years ago. Plenty of pressure right? Well that HS (I'm sure they didn't subsidize these hooligans or perport to have them fully represent the HS at our game) BUT they stood along the fence to the left of the catcher and lined up all the way to the dugout. Then the insults started vociferously and never stopped. They were screamed, at all times, during warm ups, during his wind up during the throw back from catcher. (Inserting disclaimer about son's ability to manage this and jeers are a part of the game- i get it). What i didn't know at the time was they have discovered he was dating a girl on insta and  called her just about every unflattering name in the book (see screaming desc above).

Are you interested to hear how it turned out.........

Well, they were Loud-AF ....nasty and omnipresent so they did their part to support their team. He took it for 3 innings and once he struck on the side in that 3rd inning.. he put his hand up to his ear and asked them why he couldnt hear them then as he walked off the mound! I have that nugget on video. They continued the balance of the game and some of the parents were less than stellar as well.

Basically he threw a 1(bloop) hit CG Shutout and beat the #1 team in the nation 3-0 while striking out the side about 4 times ( i think). My camera captured a lot of the noise, parents etc as i always filmed his outing. The media class from our HS had 3 cameras there to shoot the big game and they caught stuff as well. I love fans that travel and support their team and get loud......i mean it love it but think these kids may have been drunk.

Find a way to be mentally tough in all areas, situationally and while executing your skill/craft. Those dudes are the ones who shut the fans up quick once they don't get the result they desire. 

***No baby seals, kids, HS boys, HS parents, concession workers, baseballs or blades of grass were harmed during the chanting/screaming and in the end the game was a gem.

Yes, the original post was from a college game. And since I had read about that kind of thing previously on this site, I wasn't surprised that it happened. To be honest, I was more interested in the reaction of the parents, both home and away, than how it may have affected the players on the field. Some parents were really getting miffed. But, you have to know that there is no way to reason with a buzzed 19-21 year old college student. And starting a war of words will only make it worse.

So, when a Mom from the visiting side started yelling that they had no class and needed to show some respect, she had her Northern accent mimicked back at her by a couple of the Lacrosse guys.

Happens in high school too....no inebriation required just a rivalry.

The heckling and ragging existed long before social media.  I played for a northern team, and always remembered the fans of the southern teams to be particularly "challenging".  Can't have rabbit ears - you have to tune it out, which is easier said than done.

Last year was the first time in my life I became irritated enough to email a High School principal regarding their student fans behavior.  We were playing them in a 3 game stretch.  During the first game  (at their fields) the student fans started using social media to look up information regarding our players.  They didn't stop there, but figured out who some of the players were dating.  

They stepped over the line as soon as they started sexualizing 16 year old girls.  Things like, "Hey Jenny is on here knees in front of me".  or "Hey I have Robin bent over right now" or "Marge and I are heading off to the Marriott to do it". I was surprised that not one of our kids walked over and put the beat down on those kids for talking about their girlfriends like that.  Not one school representative from their school thought to put a stop to a bunch of guys talking about young women in this way.  After the game a number of their parents stopped by to apologize to us for the students behavior.  

The next game was at our fields and the same group of students traveled down to watch the game.  Before the game even started they started in with the same stuff.  Our school has an administrator attend all games for every sport.  They shut the stuff down immediately.   Told the students they were allowed to remain at the game but needed to stay in the stands and were not to talk about the players girlfriends.  They elected to leave before the game even started.

It was at this point that I emailed the school.  The basic response we, we can't identify the students in question and those that were at the game said our parents started things by yelling at the students to "grow up".  They also stated that they would have extra school representation at the next game.

Our third game was back at their school.  There were a number of administrators there as well as the police when we showed up.  Their administrator made a speech to our parents about our behavior and that we needed to control ourselves and stay in our stands.  In addition they pushed any of our students who traveled to the game back away from the fence.  Their students were still allowed to stand right behind the backstop.  The police and school administration left by the 3rd inning.  Guess what started up as soon as they walked away.  This lasted for the remaining 4 innings.  Every single thing they started chanting or yelling had to so with them performing some type of sexual act on our players girlfriends.  Not one person in their stands, or from their coaching staff made an attempt to stop them.  

This time I decided to take some video of what was going on.  I forwarded it to their principal (female) as well as superintendent (female) along with my thoughts of how would they like this if these things were being said about them.  Lets just say their reaction was totally different then my first email.

I guess I have two points to this long drawn out story.  First is it doesn't matter what you put on social media someone will always find something to use against you.  Secondly, there is a point where things can cross a line and students should be able to use social media if they so choose.

The reason that local high school games are different is that the student hecklers aren't anonymous. The players and parents can identify or find someone who can identify the students in question. And then a player and his teammates can easily run into that heckler off of school grounds.

A couple of years ago, there was a guy who did stats and spotted for the PA announcer in our HS football press box. He was a former football player at the high school, which was a fairly new school, and had no sports history and no real fan base. He decided to start up a web blog and break down the team, future opponents and players by position. He was trying to create interest, start dialog,  and encourage discussion. On about the third week, following a loss, he decided to criticize the offensive line for their poor play. And that created a problem. One of the school's biggest boosters had a son who played O Line. Kid was a 280lb D1 prospect. So, while the guy was in press box working the JV game, the booster brought his hulking son up to the press box and sat down beside the blogger. He introduced his son to the guy and then said why don't you tell him to his face about the poor play of the O Line.  That was the end of the blog.

Iowamom23 posted:

People don't need social media to find buttons. Other team figured out my son was a freshman at some point during his first varsity outing and were pretty merciless. He pitched well, but I was very grateful the field was next to a train track that was regularly used and drowned them out. And now he's fine with whatever comes his way.

The same thing happened to my son playing fall baseball with his high school team. During a game against one of the top teams in our state, the entire team was shouting about how they were going to rock the Freshman pitcher and started chanting Freshman, Freshman, etc. It was really weird and not something we expected. It seemed to fuel my kid though. We all just laughed and he held his own.

Before social media, players were still fair game. They may know more personal details these days, but the razzing is the same.

When I was in high school (the 70's and long before social media) we had bench jockeys who picked the inning they wanted a certain rival pitcher to lose it. The pitcher had the largest set of rabbit ears in high school baseball history. 

What do you think of this  - kid in our area, a  RHP 2017 Power 5 commit,  posted on Twitter that he topped out at 97 last weekend. Very impressive for sure, but I don't see the point of that, unless maybe he's thinking draft not school?

JCG posted:

What do you think of this  - kid in our area, a  RHP 2017 Power 5 commit,  posted on Twitter that he topped out at 97 last weekend. Very impressive for sure, but I don't see the point of that, unless maybe he's thinking draft not school?

Maybe he was happy to reach a new goal?

I don't have a Twitter account but if touch 77 tomorrow while throwing BP, I'm tweeting it. :-)

Guess none of you all know nothin' about the cheap seats or Cajun cafe at Clemson. 

Experience of a lifetime for any opposing teams right fielder.

Guess not

Happens all the time and the better your player/son is the more it happens, I tell mine to enjoy it will be lifetime memories and a great laugh someday. His mom hates it, he thinks it is hilarious!!

You know everyone needs to use social media responsibly - kids AND parents.  It's just good common sense.

But we also need to develop thicker skin as a whole.  Why does what something someone says in the stands that you don't know and they don't know you matter?  Are there lines that shouldn't be crossed?  Absolutely but control the things you can control.  Now as an AD the person who said they filmed their crowd and emailed the principal and superintendent I want to know that because I can control my kids and I'm going to control them.  It goes back to control what you can control.  I can control what happens at our fields but I can't control what happens at other places.  It's frustrating but that's why they do it - to frustrate you.  Best way to shut them up and go out and perform.

As for the big OL kid whose dad took him to the pressbox - did the kid play bad as part of the OL which led to the criticisms on the blog?  If he did play bad then why don't he go to work on getting better?  If he didn't play bad then what does it matter if some guy said something negative about him?  Welcome to real life.

Son's team opened at Texas A & M.  His team was doing a countdown to the opener and with 4 days left (Monday of game week), they posted his pic on Twitter because he is #4....within a couple hours, he had 3 or 4 new followers.....yep, all Aggie fans....lol.  He shut down Twitter for the rest of the week.  I wasn't at the game when he threw on Saturday, but it was on the SEC network...I was sitting at home in Ohio and could hear them chanting his name between pitches lol.   His mom was there....she said it was crazy,  but they never did anything derogatory....just comedy, chants and names....my son said that during Friday's opener, he didn't even notice it from the dugout and really never noticed it while he was on the mound.  Sounds like the A & M fans were a bit more restrainted than the OP's opponent.  I don't have a problem with it as long as it's not too negative....heck, my son's team is lucky to play in front of 200 fans most games....they could care less what the fans do when they're in front of 7000....even though they had a really tough weekend, he said it was his best baseball experience ever

Personally, I think it's extraordinarily weak of parents or non student adults to be heckling college (or high school) players.  The student section is another matter, and part of the bargain.  I do think its okay for parents to good-naturedly heckle opposing coaches - they are adults and being paid.

As a parent, I cannot imagine heckling opposing players or coaches.  I'm much too busy heckling the umpires.

My sons HS has a fan base for their hockey team that started this year.  It grew!  We are in the local championship game this Friday.  But the students are getting carried away.  Jeering when a kid wipes out on the ice or cheering a hard it.  Its cool.  They chant, "you cant do that" when the other team gets a penalty.  Its awesome to see.  But then it starts with "46 your a p*SSY, f*g" .    Its overboard and classless.  I had to say something to them.... Fortunately for the crew, they know me and they contained it somewhat....But even for the fans of the other team, people acting like asses is embarrassing...

In our state (where my kids grew up) the high school kids will direct cheers at players. But if names or numbers are part of it they can be tossed from the stands. 

The worst sportsmanship I've seen is when we (back in my day in my state) upset a high school basketball team at their gym. They tried to tip over our bus. During the game it was a concern we were going to get mugged on the court when it became obvious who was going to win. 

At least they didn't try to kill a player like they did a few years later. Starting with semis states were played at an NBA arena. After the kid was killed in the parking lot players were no longer allowed to drive to the games themselves. They had to take the team bus with a police escort into the arena.

My son will be in high school next year and his choice was between 2 schools. One has a good baseball team that has made it to states a few times. The other team usually not out of district.

I opted for him to go to the one that hasn't made it out of district because I've been to a number of games for different sports where the two teams where playing each other and the not so good team fans represented themselves much better. The other team fans were swearing at coaches and players and being very rude.

JCG posted:

As a parent, I cannot imagine heckling opposing players or coaches.  I'm much too busy heckling the umpires.

Put a saddle on him and ride em like a jockey eh?

LOL