When People Become Commodities

At the end of July, I–like everyone else in the baseball world–was wrapped up in the fanfare of another major league trade deadline. There was so much to think about: How would teams approach the deadline this year with the new rules in place eliminating August waiver trades? Which teams were going for it? What would my team do–or not do? 

On my commute home from work on the afternoon of the deadline, as I listened to a podcast about the science of human empathy, something that has nagged at me for years and feels more salient than ever came to the forefront of my mind: The language we use to talk about baseball players–not just at the trade deadline, but almost all the time–makes me deeply uncomfortable. Players being referred to as “commodities” in headlines and articles makes me cringe. It’s language that turns people into property.

Social science has a lot to teach us about how deploying empathy in our sports fandom more often and more effectively can inject some humanity into baseball–a humanity for which the game would be much better off. Not only can it improve the fan experience by broadening our horizons and becoming more invested in the successes of individual players, but when players feel their humanity is recognized, they are more likely to exude the love for the game and its fans that makes this sport meaningful.

The great double-edged sword of human empathy is, of course, that it is incredibly parochial. The in-group versus out-group mentality is useful when there is a shared trauma or threat, but our natural instinct to be more empathetic toward people inside our tribe than outside of it breeds the inability to see the perspectives of those different from us.

It’s hard to imagine a more obvious manifestation of the tribalism and bias involved in empathy than sports fandom. A classic study of soccer fans in the U.K. showed that fans were more willing to help a stranger in distress if that stranger was wearing a jersey of their own team, rather than a jersey of a rival team. However, prior to the experiment, when fans were asked to write about how much they love the game of soccer in general as opposed to focusing on how much they love their particular team, willingness to help a stranger sporting a rival jersey rose. This demonstrates our ability to expand our in-groups and–even implicitly or subconsciously–seek common ground. 

Sports and sports fandom create a perfect storm. Both incredibly tribal and brimming with dehumanizing language in multiple lines of discussion and analysis about the game, the end result is players being treated as the out-group. This hasn’t arisen by accident. It is a phenomenon borne of a long an entrenched history of players literally being treated as property. Players were not able to successfully unionize until the 1950s and the free agency system as we know it today did not exist until two decades later. Prior to players obtaining these rights, players were bought and sold like cattle. 

John Montgomery Ward, the star player primarily responsible for the first effort—dubbed the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players—to organize baseball players, described the buying and selling of players exactly as a “live-stock transaction.” Curt Flood, the hero in the fight for free agency in baseball, famously wrote in a letter to Commissioner Bowie Kuhn requesting to be a free agent, “I do not regard myself as a piece of property to be bought or sold.” After Flood sued Major League Baseball to challenge the reserve clause in a landmark challenge to the status quo of labor relations in baseball, he declared to sportscaster Howard Cosell, “A well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave.” Flood’s comparison of baseball players to slaves not only highlights the utter lack of agency players have had historically, but also alludes to the underlying racial dynamics inherent in this discussion, of which he was acutely aware. 

Parlance that treats players as commodities still reigns supreme–“selling high,” “buying low,” etc. The language used to describe young players and prospects only fans these flames. Read any scouting report and it’s hard to miss comments about a player’s body, his makeup, and his projected future value as a number or grade. National baseball writers working for prominent outlets are crafting lists of which players provide the most “bang for the buck,” and even advocating for such calculations to factor into voting for performance awards. This language is pervasive—even among the self-professed “woke” members of the baseball community—and it is dangerous. It seeps into our vernacular, insipid on the surface, but causes irreparable harm on its way to the justification of more insidious acts, such as the exploitation of children–once again underscoring the role racism has played historically and continues to play in the dehumanization of players.

As sabermetrics continue to become more advanced and public access to data increases, the temptation to view players as numbers can become more prominent. Fantasy sports, which put fans in the seats of front-office personnel, only exacerbate this distancing effect. “In fantasy football, we’re valuing players according to what they can do for us,” said Renee Miller, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester in an interview with the New York Times. “The fact that we are using football players for our own purpose necessitates our distancing ourselves from them. They are people, but people who work for us, and with whom we have no personal contact.” Fantasy baseball is certainly no different in this regard and increased access to data, along with sports betting becoming more mainstream, have fueled the expansion of the fantasy sports industry at a breakneck pace.

What sets baseball apart from the other major team sports in America, though, is its unique adherence to a sense of tradition and the “unwritten rules” so often discussed in baseball circles. There are countless examples in baseball of players being actively discouraged from showing their personality and in some cases even being demonized or punished for doing so. Simply ask Tim Anderson or any other player who flipped his bat a little too vehemently or celebrated his achievements a little too much. Or ask Manny Machado, who recently discussed the double-standards inherent in how MLB doles out its punishments for breaking rules, written and unwritten. This goes far beyond how players choose to express themselves on the field and extends to their personal lives. Players have been criticized in the past for taking paternity leave for the birth of their children.

When Adam Jones faced backlash for using his 10-5 rights to reject a trade to the Philadelphia Phillies in 2018 he said in an interview with The Athletic, “I did what was best for Adam Jones and his family. If people don’t like that, you know me, I don’t care about that. That was a personal decision. It was a right that I earned. The thing is, most people get mad when athletes have rights. They think we are little puppets. I’m not a puppet. I earned those rights.”

He went on to say, “We are athletes, we are seen as these superstar athletes. But the second we start to act like normal people, we are assholes. Why? I bleed just as you bleed.”

Why indeed? The baseball media, baseball fans, and even teams foster a culture that treats players like machines rather than human beings who bleed just as we bleed. Players are routinely encouraged to “rub some dirt in it” and play through injuries, often to the detriment of their long-term career prospects. They sacrifice not only their physical health, but their mental health as well. Robert Whalen has been open about the fact that he did not get the help he needed to address his depression while he was playing. He is certainly not the first player, nor will he be the last, to put the game ahead of his basic well-being. One particular phrase from Whalen sticks out: “I was kind of losing my identity as a person.”

As analytics increasingly become part of the fabric of baseball–and for good reason–it is essential that we do not check our humanity at the door. We may all be nerds here (well, at least I am), but sports fandom is, at its core, an emotional experience. More empathy toward ballplayers would go a long way toward making the game we all love better in innumerable ways. “It is simply the right thing to do” should be a good enough reason on its own, but deploying more empathy in fandom has tangible positive effects. By rooting for the back of the jersey as well as the front, a fan instantly gains more sources of joy in the game through seeing players he or she may have fallen in love with on his or her own team succeed elsewhere. By putting pressure on the league to treat players fairly, fans have the power to allow players to funnel more of their passion into the game and less of it into bargaining with Major League Baseball. And when players are happier, it manifests itself on the field in a way that makes for a better fan experience.

There is evidence that players directly link fan support and interaction to their own enjoyment of the game. During the heat of a playoff race this time four years ago, Bryce Harper famously expressed his disappointment with fans leaving early, saying, “Hopefully our fans show out for the next three days and we can have some fun and enjoy the game of baseball.” Conversely, all it takes is witnessing the reaction of a child when a player acknowledges them in some way to realize that it is the human moments of baseball that make a fan for life, even beyond team loyalties. 

Social science arms us with strategies we can employ to be more empathetic consumers of the game without sacrificing a lot of the in-the-weeds analysis that we enjoy. Evaluate the language you’re using when talking about a player and be cognizant of the fact that the player is a human being. Be a little less online (I know, I know, not always easy). Instead of just reading players’ words, listen to interviews with those players. Or better yet, go see them play in person rather than just behind a TV screen. The joy that players exude is infectious. Every once in a while, watch games where your team is not playing. Of course, as a passionate fan myself, I would never advocate for renouncing team-specific fandom altogether. But finding ways to express our love for the game as a whole allows us to extend our “tribe” to include baseball players and fans, rather than just fans of our own teams. 

Every time I think about what makes me cynical about the state of the game today—teams tanking, extensive $/WAR treatises, propositions of doing away with minor league baseball—I remind myself of the moment I became a lifelong baseball fan in the first place. It was, in fact, around this time 18 years ago. I was a month away from my 11th birthday growing up in suburban New Jersey, less than 30 miles from Manhattan. Ten days earlier, I heard the screams of my classmates whose loved ones worked in the World Trade Center and watched them taken out of the room by crisis counselors. I learned what the word “terrorism” meant. I was processing concepts and feelings well beyond my emotional maturity level—old enough to understand, but not really understand, what was happening in my community and my country. And I was scared. On September 21, my family did what we always do on an evening during baseball season: we watched the Mets. It was the first professional sporting event in New York since the attacks.

I don’t need to recount all of the details here because you know them. Mike Piazza’s home run was the first time I felt normal again. It was the first time I felt OK again. And it was a moment that transcended team or tribe. It was a moment where the beauty of the game of baseball helped heal a city and a nation. It was a moment where human empathy ruled the day. And it was the moment when I became a Mets fan and a baseball fan forever. 

We do not need another monumental national tragedy to capture that connection and joy in the baseball fan experience. We can live it in small ways every day by enjoying players’ unique personalities and seeing their humanity. Let the kids play.