From the Windup: Booing Your Own

From the Windup is Matt Snyder's extended look at some aspect of America's pastime each Thursday.

We're getting close to having three full weeks of baseball in the books. Astute fans know that it's definitely not enough to reveal the outcome of the season, but it's certainly enough of a sample to start drawing preliminary conclusions. Of course, you still have the occasional instance where home crowds boo their own players for one reason or another. Wednesday, for example, CC Sabathia was booed by about half the Yankee Stadium crowd when he departed after allowing six earned runs in 6 2/3 innings, upping his ERA to 4.81 on the season.

Home fans booing their own team has become an out-of-control epidemic in professional sports at this point. I don't know if there is jealousy due to the amount of money being made by the players -- which begs the question: Why are you paying to be in attendance? -- if the expectations get the best of people, or if many fans just think it's cool to boo.

We'll sift through some of the reasons people boo players on their favorite team, and I'll give you my extremely biased opinion on whether or not it's an acceptable reason. In return, you should feel free to boo me in the comments section -- just make sure it's for the right reasons. Deal?

Money

Rationale: The players are millionaires. Most fans are not even close. You'll hear many fans say something like, "if you paid me $6 million a year, you could boo me all you wanted." I hate that argument. Having a lot of money doesn't turn people into emotionless robots. You also have the issue where a player makes way too much money in relation to his talent level. Thus, fans boo a player because he's not playing up to his contract. Juan Pierre is the poster-child for this, but Gary Matthews Jr. applies quite aptly as well.

Verdict: I simply cannot condone this. The reason I say this is that it's very hypocritical. I haven't polled every baseball fan, but I feel pretty confident in saying that there's no one who has seen a job offer, and said, "you know what? That's too much. I'm not going to be worth that salary, so please pay me less and I'll accept the job." More to the point: Can you really fault Pierre for signing a contract the Dodgers offered him? It's not like he squeezed them or leveraged them against other offers.

The bottom line, for me, is that if you think baseball players are overpaid, you should just stop watching the sport and you certainly shouldn't be wasting your own money to attend games. When you sign up (figuratively, of course, though it would be really cool to actually sign up as a fan, no?) to cheer for a baseball team, you forgo any right to generally complain about how "baseball players make too much money." As a fan, you are enabling their salaries, so either turn the page by accepting it, or stop being a fan.

Under-performance

Rationale: The players are paid large sums of money, and when they don't play up to their abilities, the fans who pay those salaries -- albeit indirectly -- show frustration by raining down boos upon them. Sometimes it's for a small sample of futility (think CC) and sometimes it's because of a pattern of failing to meet the expectations placed upon the player by management (think Coco Crisp when the Red Sox tried to replace Johnny Damon with him). Still other times, it's because he's been so ridiculously bad. For example, if the Yankees fans booed Chien-Ming Wang right now, would anyone blame them? He needs to throw four consecutive shutouts just to get the ERA under 5.00.

Verdict: I'm on the fence when it's reasonable. For example, booing a star player after two bad games is pretty stupid, considering how long the season is. During an extended, out-of-character, swoon, though, I can see it. What if a pitcher just can't throw strikes? The Democratic school of thought would say it's not like he's trying to throw balls, so give him a break. The Republican school of thought would say he just needs to be better at his job. Frankly, I can see both sides of it. If a guy is truly giving full effort and is just having a bad season, it's hard to demean him as a person. On the other hand, if you are a salesman and haven't sold anything in six months, I'm not sure your boss thinking you're a swell guy would save your job. At some point there has to be some production. The accountable, stand-up players would likely understand. I remember back in 2004 when Derek Jeter had an abysmal first two months (hitting .189 on May 25) and he was asked about the boo-birds. He said something along the lines of, "I'd boo me, too."

On the Sabathia situation, it's worth nothing that many fans were attempting to applaud his efforts as well -- likely to drown out the boos. While I don't back booing him just yet, I can't get on board with congratulating him for a poor start, either. Just let him walk out in silence. He knows he sucked, and I doubt he wants you to cheer for him after an outing like that.

Team Expectations

Rationale: A team is simply not as good as fans thought they would be. The fans will say they didn't buy season tickets to watch these guys play so badly, so they boo. It's way early, but candidates from the team perspective right now could be the Brewers, Braves, Mets, Phillies, Indians and Rays.

Verdict: I'm OK with this, as long as it's late in the season. For example, if the Phillies are under .500 in the middle of August, they probably deserve to be showered with boos from their usually serene fans (please note the sarcasm). I'm not OK with it when the expectations are unreasonable. The Cubs were getting booed at nearly every turn during a loss to the Rockies a week ago. Um, seriously? The team was above .500, and only a week and a half into the season, and we're booing? Settle down. Take some Prozac or something. I hate to break this to all fans, but your team isn't going to be perfect. If you demand perfection, you can look forward to a long season, even if your team ends up with the best record in baseball.

Player Expectations

Rationale: Let's say a team makes a really ill-advised trade. An example would be the Diamondbacks dealing Carlos Quentin to the White Sox because they intended to install Eric Byrnes as their everyday left fielder for the foreseeable future. Quentin is now one of the best power-hitters in the league, and Byrnes pretty much sucks. Some Diamondback fans might be inclined to boo Byrnes, due to the fact that they are stuck with him instead of a 40-homer-hitting 26-year-old.

Verdict: I have to admit I've done this before (Pierre, the Cubs traded Ricky Nolasco for him), and it was wrong. The fans should be frustrated with the front office, not the player who was traded. Did Byrnes demand management deal Quentin for virtually nothing? No. Even if he did, they didn't have to listen to him. You could understand why fans of the Snakes would expect Byrnes to play like a stud. The problem is that's just not reasonable. Thus, he should be spared (for the record, I'm pretty sure most D'backs fans follow this, because I haven't heard them booing Byrnes much. I just needed a relevant example).

Frustration With the Franchise

Rationale: There are several divisions here. You have teams like the Cubs, Indians, Giants, Astros, etc. who haven't won a World Series championship in recent memory (or ever). They might be competitive, but then, once they get into the playoffs, every little error incites a huge chorus of boos. Look at Game 2 of the 2008 NLDS in Wrigley Field for a perfect example. The anxiousness to break the fake-curse actually seemed to boil over and appeared to cause some of the players to tense up. Every single little mistake was venomously booed.

On the flip side, constant futility can cause the fans to boo. Look at the Pirates and Nationals as recent examples. Enough is enough at some point for the fans.

Verdict: It depends upon where the boos are directed. I can't see blaming the Pirates' recent history on Nate McLouth or Paul Maholm as being productive. Plus, the new administration seems to be doing things the correct way in building a foundation for the future. So, when Pittsburgh starts to take its lumps this year, please be gentle, Pirates fans. On the other hand, when the past administrations were making ridiculously bad trades (I'd like to thank them for giving the Cubs Aramis Ramirez, by the way), booing the team as a whole was a productive way to tell management the fans weren't pleased. They are, after all, the consumers of the on-field product.

When it comes to a historical lack of championships, the fans need to realize only one team can win it all each season. It's a torturous thing rooting for a team for 30-plus years and never experience the ultimate goal -- believe me, I know -- but I don't see how it was productive to boo the Cubs out of the stadium in Game 2. The players really wanted to win, and they were giving full effort. I was actually a bit embarrassed about that display, as a matter of fact.

Mental Errors

Rationale: A player makes a really stupid mistake that shouldn't happen. He purposely misses a cut-off man, throws to the wrong base, gets thrown out after running through a stop sign, or gets picked off third base. It's the major leagues, and these types of things shouldn't be happening, in the fans' minds, so they boo.

Verdict: I'm on board with this one. Baseball is as much a mental game as a physical one. If you are paid to play in the majors, you better have enough mental focus to ensure only physical errors are made.

Physical Errors

Rationale: A player boots a routine ground ball. The crowd boos because that shouldn't happen, in their collective, generalized view.

Verdict: I can't accept this. Most people who would boo a physical error, as long as the player is giving full effort, have probably never played the game at a high level. Everyone who has knows that sometimes errors just happen. I hate to break this to you people, but Ozzie Smith sometimes made errors. Greg Maddux occasionally made a bad defensive play. Brooks Robinson averaged more than 10 per season. It happens. There's no reason to shower them with boos because they are human beings -- a fact I think boo-birds fail to recognize the majority of the time.

Indifference or Lack of Effort

Rationale: The perfect illustration for this was the disgraceful behavior of Manny Ramirez before he was traded to the Dodgers last season. That was pathetic. He simply didn't feel like playing hard because he wanted a trade, yet he was already making an obscene amount of money. For any upstanding citizen, that is just not right, and it wouldn't be in any walk of life. Thus, Red Sox fans booed him mercilessly.

Verdict: Absolutely boo him like you've never booed before. In fact, I encourage more people to take part if a player (Oliver Perez, possibly?) seems content with taking paychecks and not giving his full effort. It is utterly unacceptable to ever give less than your full effort on the baseball field at any level. As someone who took that task very seriously for many years -- and can't do so anymore -- nothing irks me more than watching a player get paid millions of dollars to loaf around and act like it's some sort of burden to play the game. It's a privilege to be a millionaire playing a kid's game. My favorite players are always the ones who recognize that. If possible, I actually wish the Red Sox fans would have treated Manny worse, because his "effort" was nothing short of despicable.

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The basic argument against pretty much everything above is the typical, "I paid my money, I'll boo whomever I want." I'm not really going to argue against that, but I just think it's overkill when you boo a player for popping up in the 2nd inning of the season's 10th game. Shouldn't you be expending your energy on cheering for your favorite team -- you know, the one you actually like? -- and hassling the opposing team? I'm all about that. I boo the very existence of Albert Pujols, even though he's the best player in the league and seems like a good enough guy. I boo him because I'm a Cubs fan and he plays for our bitter rival. In turn, I expect all Cardinals fans to hate Aramis Ramirez. That's how it works, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about home players getting booed by their own fans.

A Final Disclaimer: I'm a fanatic in every sense of the word. I love the Cubs with all my heart, but when they let me down (read: often), I sometimes react in a manner that is, shall we say, a bit irrational. Just because I'm laying out how I feel we should act in the stands doesn't mean I've never violated any of these guidelines. As those who read the Zebra Report can attest, I'm a reflective guy. I'll often do things and then later go back and realize I shouldn't have done them -- and then I'll admit it. Accountability is a good thing. The message? Do as I say, not as I do.