Saw a Deadspin piece the other day by Adam Zielonka, which landed on my radar because it was about the Blob's new favorite golfer, Max Homa. He became the Blob's new favorite golfer last month, when he actually carried his own sticks in a U.S. Open qualifier because he'd parted company with his caddy and couldn't find a last-minute replacement.
A PGA regular pack mule-ing his own bag like Bogey Joe from St. Looie Mo? Now that's a damn golfer, by God.
Which gets us back to Zielonka's piece.
It wasn't about Homa as Everyman, but Homa as a target for fan asshat-tery. Last weekend, see, Homa shot an opening-round 63 in the John Deere Classic and briefly led on Sunday, finally winding up fifth. In what has been his worst season in eight years, it was far and away his best weekend.
Only some folks on social media didn't think so.
"I hope you (expletive) kill yourself, dude," one of them posted.
Another requested Homa put $1,900 in his Venmo account because he'd bet Max to win.
Zielonka's response to that was pretty much any sane person's: You bet $1,900 on Max Homa to win? A guy who hasn't won in two years and is 99th in the PGA rankings right now? Are you a complete imbecile?
(And, OK, so Zielonka didn't write the last. That's my own contribution.)
Anyway, this points up a new component in what was already a virulent affliction: The role online betting plays in the aforementioned asshat-tery.
You can lay down cash on almost anything from almost anywhere now, and rather than be appalled by that, major sporting entities are leaning into it. Even Major League Baseball, scarred by the Black Sox scandal and death on gambling since, is getting in on the online betting craze. They're even moving the A's to Vegas, where they'll rejoin the Raiders of the NFL.
The result is there are more deranged fans than ever out there now. And there were plenty before.
Most recently, of course, there was the dipshite White Sox fan who reduced Diamondbacks' star Ketel Marte to tears by taunting him about his mother, who died several years ago in a traffic accident. And there was the lovely group of Betsy Bigots who followed a transgender high school track star around all season just to heckle her.
Standing up for girls sports, this group claimed. Buncha lowlifes yelling at a high school kid according to anyone with a sense of decency.
At least, though, the Betsy Bigots were motivated only by their bigotry, and not by a hit to the wallet. That introduces an entirely new level of vitriol to the mix, and a potentially lethal one. As Zielonka points out, just recently the Houston Astros assigned security to pitcher Lance McCuller's family because an angry gambler threatened McCuller's children. I'm guessing it won't be the last time that happens.
I'm also guessing that, one of these days, one of those angry gamblers is going to do more than threaten. A tad melodramatic, perhaps, but not outside the realm.
You'd hope MLB or the NFL or any other sporting monolith would take this sort of potentially dangerous harassment more seriously, in the interest of protecting the players who are their product. But when you're in bed with the gamblers yourselves, and making beaucoup dollars off the arrangement, you're pretty much in reap-what-you-sow country. Occasional death threats?
Just part of the deal.
And, OK, so perhaps that's a bit harsh. But even the site for which Zielonka wrote the Homa piece is all-in on the gambling culture. An entire swath of Deadspin is devoted to betting, and you can't scroll very far without seeing multiple ads for FanDuel and BetMGM and other online betting sites. It has become pervasive.
And a new chapter, if you will, of that long-running favorite, Fans Are Jerks. Plus the reason Homa and others are more and more eschewing social media these days.
"If you wouldn't choose to, like, sit around a table with somebody who's being that mean, I don't know, you would always get up," Homa said before the John Deere Classic last week, as reported by Zielonka. "You would always get up. If you were right there and someone was being rude to you, you would either ask them to leave or you would leave."
Although maybe you dump a drink on Betsy Bigot's head first, or pick up a bat and go all Ty Cobb on that jackwagon in Chicago. But that's just me.
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