HOUSTON — Soon after Lance McCullers Jr.’s family received online death threats following a tough start by the Astros pitcher, his 5-year-old daughter, Ava, overheard wife Kara talking on the phone about it.
What followed was a painful conversation between McCullers and his little girl.
“She asked me when I came home: ‘Daddy, like, what is threats? Who wants to hurt us? Who wants to hurt me?'” McCullers told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “So those conversations are tough to deal with.”
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McCullers is one of two MLB pitchers whose families have received online death threats this month as internet abuse of players and their families is on the rise. Boston Red Sox reliever Liam Hendriks took to social media soon after the incident with McCullers to call out people who were threatening Hendriks’ wife’s life and directing “vile” comments at him.
The Astros contacted MLB security and the Houston Police Department following the threats to McCullers. A police spokesperson said Thursday that it remains an ongoing investigation.
McCullers, who has two young daughters, took immediate action after the threats and hired 24-hour security for his family.
“You have to at that point,” he said.
Players from the league agree that online abuse has gotten progressively worse in recent years. Milwaukee’s Christian Yelich, a 13-year veteran and the 2018 National League MVP, said receiving online abuse is “a nightly thing” for most players.
“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.”
And many players believe it’s directly linked to the rise in legalized sports betting.
“You get a lot of DMs or stuff like that about you ruining someone’s bet or something ridiculous like that,” veteran Red Sox reliever Justin Wilson said. “I guess they should make better bets.”
Hendriks, a 36-year-old reliever who previously underwent treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, said on Instagram that he and his wife received death threats after a loss to the New York Mets. He added that people left comments saying that they wished he would have died from cancer, among other abusive comments.
“Enough is enough,” he said. “Like at some point, everyone just like sucking up and dealing with it isn’t accomplishing anything. And we pass along to security. We pass along to whoever we need to, but nothing ends up happening. And it happens again the next night.
“And so, at some point, someone has to make a stand. And it’s one of those things where, the more eyes we get on it, the more voices we get talking about it, hopefully it can push it in the right direction.”
Both the Astros and the Red Sox are working with MLB security to take action against social media users who direct threats toward players and their families. Red Sox spokesperson Abby Murphy said they have taken steps in recent years to make sure players’ families are safe during games. That includes security staff and Boston police stationed in the family section at home and dedicated security in the traveling party to monitor the family section on the road.
“I think over the last few years it’s definitely increased. 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.”
Christian Yelich, on players receiving threatening messages
Murphy said identifying those who make anonymous threats online is difficult, but “both the Red Sox and MLB have cyber programs and analysts dedicated to identifying and removing these accounts.”
The Astros have uniformed police officers stationed in the family section, a practice that was implemented well before the threats to McCullers and his family.
For some players, online abuse has gotten so bad that they have abandoned social media. Detroit Tigers All-Star outfielder Riley Greene said he got off social media because he received so many messages from people blaming him for failed bets.
“I deleted it,” he said of Instagram. “I’m off it. It sucks, but it’s the world we live in, and we can’t do anything about it. People would DM me and say nasty things, tell me how bad of a player I am and say nasty stuff that we don’t want to hear.”
The 31-year-old McCullers, who returned this year after missing two full seasons with injuries, said dealing with this has been the worst thing that has happened in his career. He understands the passion of fans and knows that being criticized for a poor performance is part of the game. But he believes there’s a “moral line” that fans shouldn’t cross.
“People should want us to succeed,” he said. “We want to succeed, but it shouldn’t come at a cost to our families, the kids in our life, having to feel like they’re not safe where they live or where they sit at games.”
Astros manager Joe Espada was livid when he learned about the threats to McCullers and his family and was visibly upset when he addressed what happened with reporters.
Espada said the team has mental health professionals available to the players to talk about the toll such abuse takes on them and any other issues they may be dealing with.
“We are aware that when we step on the field, fans expect and we expect the best out of ourselves,” Espada said this week. “But when we are trying to do our best and things don’t go our way while we’re trying to give you everything we got and now you’re threatening our families and kids — now I do have a big issue with that, right? I just did not like it.”
Kansas City’s Salvador Perez, a 14-year MLB veteran, hasn’t experienced online abuse but was appalled by what happened to McCullers. If something like that happened to him, he said, it would change the way he interacts with fans.
“Now some fans, real fans, they’re going to pay for that too,” he said. “Because if I was him, I wouldn’t take a picture or sign anything for nobody because of that one day.”
McCullers wouldn’t go that far but admitted it has changed his mindset.
“It does make you kind of shell up a little bit,” he said. “It does make you kind of not want to go places. I guess that’s just probably the human reaction to it.”
While most players have dealt with some level of online abuse in their careers, no one has a good idea of how to stop it.
“I’m thankful I’m not in a position where I have to find a solution to this,” Tigers pitcher Tyler Holton said. “But as a person who is involved in this, I wish this wasn’t a topic of conversation.”
Chicago White Sox outfielder Mike Tauchman is disheartened at how bad player abuse has gotten. While it’s mostly online, he said he has had teammates that have had racist and homophobic things yelled at them during games.
“Outside of just simply not having social media, I really don’t see that getting better before it just continues to get worse,” he said. “I mean, I think it’s kind of the way things are now. Like, people just feel like they have the right to say whatever they want to whoever they want and it’s behind a keyboard and there’s really no repercussions, right?”
