It’s not a problem exclusive to Major League Baseball, Chicago, the Cubs or the White Sox.
But is there a baseball fan on either side of town who is OK with a spectator making a vile and disparaging remark about Pete Crow-Armstrong’s mother every time the Cubs star came to the on-deck circle during Sunday’s game between the Cubs and White Sox?
It was that, as much as a female spectator in the ground-level Patio section taunting him after he narrowly missed making a great catch, that caused Crow-Armstrong, he said, to react profanely to the woman.
“I popped,’’ he said.
It was only last June that the White Sox banned a 22-year-old man from Rate Field after he brought Arizona second baseman Ketel Marte to tears by making derogatory comments about Marte’s late mother. MLB also banned the spectator indefinitely from all MLB facilities.
In that instance, Arizona manager Torey Lovullo flagged security and pointed out the guilty party. Security officials immediately escorted him out of his seat. It became a national story, and the White Sox were widely praised for their actions.
“BASEBALL IS FAMILY—THE WHITE SOX COMMUNITY SUPPORTS KETEL MARTE” the White Sox posted on their video board the next day.
Last Sunday at Rate Field, those family ties were shredded once again by the spectator who evidently thought the price of a ticket entitled him to insult Crow-Armstrong’s mother with a highly offensive term. Had Crow-Armstrong or anyone else reported the matter to Sox security, their track record suggests that spectator would have been led off the premises as well.
But Crow-Armstrong made no public comment about the miscreant’s conduct until after Tuesday night’s game with the Brewers, the day after MLB informed him he had been fined $5,000 for “comments made to a fan”—the woman sitting in the Patio section.
Did her booing and taunting, “You suck,” rise to groun
