I hate to read reports like this one yesterday where tennis player Naomi Osaka was severely heckled during her match.
Naomi Osaka was reduced to tears after being heckled during her second-round defeat to Veronika Kudermetova in Indian Wells.
The Japanese player, who missed parts of the 2021 season to look after her mental health, was jeered early in the match and it was undoubtedly a major factor as she lost 6-0, 6-4 to the world No 24.
A spectator reportedly shouted “Naomi, you suck”, with Osaka complaining to the umpire, and as she went to serve at the start of the third game, she was visibly crying. Clearly affected, she lost the first set without winning a game, before putting up a better fight in the second.
This behavior was especially cruel since Osaka has had well-known issues with mental health that have caused her to withdraw from some major tournaments. But it appears that this particular tournament has a nasty reputation for obnoxious fan behavior.
Osaka made the unconventional decision to stay on court and be interviewed after her loss, saying the incident reminded her of a video she watched of Venus and Serena Williams receiving abuse at the same venue in 2001.
The Williams sisters boycotted the event – widely regarded to be the biggest outside the four grand slams – for 14 years after being racially abused 21 years ago. Speaking through tears on court, Osaka said: “I just wanted to say thank you, I feel like I cry enough on camera.
“To be honest, I’ve been heckled before, it doesn’t really bother me, but being heckled here, I watched a video of Venus and Serena getting heckled here. If you’ve never watched it you should watch it and I don’t know why, but it got into my head and it got replayed a lot.”
This kind of behavior is particularly reprehensible in individual sports. When a team gets heckled, the vitriol is spread around and if an individual team member is targeted, their team mates can rally round that provide support. But tennis players are on their own. Remember that in 2001, Serena Williams was only 19 and not yet the tennis powerhouse she later became.
I went to a school where the principal had very strict rules about how the boys should behave when they attended a sporting event in which our school team was playing. You were allowed to cheer but only spontaneously and positively to encourage better efforts. You were not allowed to engage in organized cheering where people would cheer in unison or in a call-and-response fashion, with or without a leader. You were expected to applaud good plays by the opposing team. And you were absolutely forbidden from jeering or heckling or booing the opponents. The idea was to get the best performances by members of either team.
The principal would attend most games and if there was any violation of these rules, especially the one about castigating opponents, we could expect a stern lecture at the next day’s school assembly and if any individual student was identified as a culprit, he would be called in to the principal’s office for a personal dressing down. If my principal had been an official at the Osaka event, he would have had security march that fan out of the stadium.
Such strict rules for spectators was unusual even among Sri Lankan schools. While some students chafed under them, I must say that it has had a lasting, and I believe positive, effect on me. I still follow those rules and think that they add to my pleasure of watching games because I can appreciate good play y anyone. After all, these events are designed to highlight superior athletic abilities, not to gloat or taunt. The famous closing lines of the poem Alumnus Football by sports writer Grantland Rice were drilled into us in school because it uses sports as a metaphor to teach the lesson that one should live one’s life in a principled way so that one can look back on it without feeling shame or remorse.
For when the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name,
He writes – not that you won or lost – but how you played the Game.
I know that complaining about bad behavior by some sports fans in the US is like complaining that water is wet. But I still hate it and find it hard to understand. Don’t you go to these games to see players at the top of their game, whichever side they are on? Why would you want to suppress the quality by unsettling them? I can understand that one’s team sometimes wins because the opposing team played badly and that this can be a guilty pleasure. But the key thing about guilty pleasures is that they are kept secret. To openly taunt and vilify opponents in order get them to play badly is going too far because it cheapens your own team’s victory, making it due to factors other than superior ability. The only ‘rational’ reason I can think of for this kind of bad behavior is that there is gambling involved that makes the result more important than the quality of play.
Unfortunately, it happens all over. (I’m going to name community names now.)
Across the Hudson from me, Nyack High School was playing Pearl River in basketball. Nyack has a number of “minority” people, including a lot of African-Americans, and some were on the Nyack team. At a recent game, a number of Pearl River students were, among other things, making monkey noises and other racial taunts throughout the game, in particular when a Black Nyack student was making a free throw. To their credit, officials from both schools condemned the behavior, but a number of people are asking why officials did not stop the game and throw the hecklers out when they first started.
I feel like this is just yet another expression of the fact that a lot of people are just assholes. Our societies consistently produce assholes and then we do nothing about it and act surprised when everything is covered in shit.
We might want to seriously consider how we can produce people worth a damn. This civilization thing literally won’t work with the humanity we’ve got.
LykeX @2:
“This civilization thing” was largely constructed by arseholes, aka the humanity we’ve got.
I know. It shows.
You were not allowed to engage in organized cheering …
But that means no sexy cheerleaders, jumping up and down chanting “Blood makes the grass grow!”
(A particularly unfond memory of mine from attending US high schools during the war on Vietnam.)
Ok, as a white cis straight American male, who knows almost nothing about professional sports, I am tap-dancing in a minefield here, but I do see an alternate explanation, hypothetically:
First off, “Naomi, you suck” is not inherently racist, so let’s leave open the possibility that racism was not intended.
Second, while I am not a performer, I have performed before audiences a few dozen times, and while some performances were triumphs, some were also failures, and I can say with some authority that walking off a stage in utter silence, or worse, pity applause, is horrible. Possibly, the heckler was simply trying to lighten the mood.
Third, there is a long tradition of African American audiences being very harsh to African American performers who give subpar performances. I think this is due to a thinking along the lines of, ‘The majority think of us as lesser beings, so let’s show only our finest to them, so they will see us capable of greatness’. Perhaps the heckler was similarly trying to inspire Naomi to try harder.
I don’t know the mind of the heckler, and history is not on my side in hoping for a benign explanation of his (I am pretty sure it was a male who did this) motivation, but I at least see the possibility of one.
Pierce @#5,
I attended a boys school at a time when gays were very much in the closet so ‘sexy cheerleaders’ was completely out of the question. Anyone who spontaneously took on the role of being a cheerleader and led a chant was asking to be identified and reprimanded.
Any form of cheering in unison was frowned upon. What we did was clap, yell things like “Nice shot!”, or make the other kinds of involuntary noises people make, of groans, astonishment and so on, when they are watching something
The Nordic way to stop bullying
@6
You seem to have missed the detail that the comment came before start of the third game, when it was still possible for Osaka to come back and win the first set. So no, there is zero chance that anybody was trying to “lighten the mood”. (Not that that would have been appropriate in any case.)
@9rblackadar
Well, I would say that the best time to ‘lighten the mood’ would be just before there was a chance to turn the game around and win.
Sometimes fans can exhibit very good behaviour…
Yesterday, West Ham hosted Aston Villa in the English Premier League. In the second half, West Ham brought on Ukrainian international Andriy Yarmolenko as a sub, and he was welcomed by both sets of fans. When he scored, even Villa fans applauded.
In 2020, many leagues played in empty arenas, fans watched on TV. I’ll bet the players enjoyed it. As for the comic, during the 2020 NHL playoffs, there were more fights per game than the previous season. Frustration, maybe? It certainly wasn’t fans goading them on.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/31/sports/hockey/NHL-playoffs-pandemic-protocols.html
Not an expert opinion, but it seems fans harassing players is more likely to have effect in two situation: quiet sports (golf, tennis), or when epithets are being hurled (e.g. anti-gay slurs by Mexican fans). Golf and tennis impropriety becomes one on one because of the silence, while an insult in a stadium of 20,000 loud fans is less likely to affect one player. But when an entire crowd targets a player (e.g. Mario Ballotelli harassed by racist fans), the officials should declare the game a forfeit. Serious conseuences and bans (re: UK football hooligans of the 1990s) is the only way to get their attention.
Sometimes, though, there is justice for hecklers:
“This kind of behavior is particularly reprehensible in individual sports.”
I’m not sure if I agree. Eg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyqE-y01F9M
But what about the players that aren’t as famous as them?
Very few gay football players have come out of the closet.
https://playersbio.com/gay-players-in-football/
It’s a very good reason to prefer female football. Two well known lesbian lionesses are Vivianne Miedema and Sherida Spitse.
And this is how it should be (and why I haven’t turned away yet):
@Moarscienceplz: I don’t think you can say those words to someone who is in the middle of doing something difficult and have them mean anything other than a negative message. Maybe your best friend could tease you that way but I doubt it’s something I could say to or hear from a stranger in those circumstances and feel like it was a positive, supportive message. I don’t get the feeling that I’m entirely alone in that, either.
Since that viewpoint was what the rest of your message was built upon, I think what remains doesn’t convey the message you wanted it to.
@lanir: You’re definitely not alone and you are much more diplomatic than I would have been (I actually deleted much of what I actually wanted to say since it sort of defeated the purpose).
I’ll chime in too and say to moarscienceplz -- you are being VERY charitable. To a fault, in fact. I try to think the best of people -- ffs I have even been known to defend Donald fucking Trump when I think his critics have resorted to simply making shit up (as if you needed to…), but here I honestly don’t think there’s any other interpretation than that the heckler was trying deliberately to fuck up Osaka’s game. I’d be prepared to entertain the idea that it wasn’t racism per se, because I’ve seen no evidence either way, but to my eyes it was absolutely intended to ruin her game. Anyone who’s paid the ticket price knows that tennis is as much about the inner game, the psychology, as it is about physical athleticism, and shouting something like that is guaranteed to have an effect on the strongest of players, let alone one with known mental health issues. So I’m afraid even with my tendency to try to be even handed in all things -- there’s simply no other sensible interpretation here, to me. That heckler should have been immediately removed from the venue and banned from future tournaments, imo.
Years ago I was a drunk sports fan watching and England v. Sri Lanka match at Lords.
Jayasuriya was on fire, playing beautifully and hitting frequent boundaries with no apparent effort. The whole crowd was excited by his performance and I was on my feet to applaud on several occasions.
After I’d applauded particularly vigorously I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was a small, probably about ten year old boy who looked Sri Lankan, there with his mother. I was just about to apologise for standing up to applaud, but he said “Excuse me, which team do you support?” I said “England, of course!”
“So why do you clap when Jaya scores?”
“Don’t you think that you should cheer when somebody does something brilliant, even if they’re not in your team?”
He thought for a moment, then said, “Yes, I suppose so.”
I resolved not to stand up but maintained my vociferous applause until the end of Jaya’s innings. It was great, after all. I hope that boy realised that you can be partisan but appreciative of the opposition’s genius.
I like to think I wasn’t a bad drunk sports fan.
There have been other, more memorable, moments in fans’ sportsmanship. In 2015 the Rugby World Cup was held in England. There was a shock defeat in the early rounds when Japan narrowly and unexpectedly beat South Africa in Brighton. Many fans of both teams shared trains back to London. When one train arrived at Victoria Station the Bok’s fans formed a guard of honour to applaud the Japanese fans as they left the platform.
I sometimes really like sport.
sonofrojblake:
So, you’re basically saying she sucks at the inner game.
John @19:
Everyone (perhaps with some exceptions who are so arrogant their self-belief is unassailable) is vulnerable to “sucking at the inner game”. Anyone who’s played sports at a competitive level (even a fairly low level) knows this.
Her career record speaks for itself; objectively, she is the opposite of someone who sucks at tennis. So it would not be arrogance for her to believe that she doesn’t suck.
You can’t have it both ways; either her inner game is particularly brittle and fragile and vulnerable, or it’s like everyone else’s. If anything, this episode suggests she could have been even better at the sport if her inner game were not so vulnerable.
I’ve played sport at a competitive level, and I can assure you some players have been known to perform better after being heckled. Which indicates they too are not very good at that inner game, else they would be able to do so without that impetus.
—
Anyway, I can’t get too worked-up over this. End of the day, that sort of professional sport is entertainment.
> “End of the day, that sort of professional sport is entertainment.”
I don’t believe that is true. I’ve just been involved in a discussion on the subject (the tedious issue of whether woman ought have prizes / pay equal to me) and many people take the line it’s all about how much income is generated because it’s about the audience attracted and entertained.
And I disagree -- that’s the interests of investors, people who wage cash against profit and loss -- which isn’t what players trying to be the best at their sport are doing. And I don’t want those I enjoy watching play doing what is profitable at the expense of a sport (which I believe my nation about to witness destroy our heritage in Rugby).
There are of course exceptions who use their talent for profit -- they are often seen in the unsporting who cheat or leverage unsporting options to win. I’m not their audience.
Surely you can get to “some people are just bastards and enjoy the feeling of power it gives them to make someone else feel miserable”?
@John Morales, 20:
“you’re basically saying…”
Standing by for some bullshit I didn’t say…
” she sucks at the inner game.”
And there you have it.
No, I’m not saying that, because that’s obviously bullshit. That’s something from your head.
What I am saying is that her inner game is clearly brilliant… When her only opponent is the one on the other side of the court, holding a racket and required to play by the rules. It wouldn’t make me bad at boxing if I struggled in a bout where some of the crowd were allowed to punch me as well, in between rounds.
sonofrojblake:
Yeah, you are. Just can’t bring yourself to admit to it.
you:”tennis is as much about the inner game”
OP quote: “A spectator reportedly shouted “Naomi, you suck”, with Osaka complaining to the umpire, and as she went to serve at the start of the third game, she was visibly crying. Clearly affected, she lost the first set without winning a game, before putting up a better fight in the second.”
Kinda hard to spin that. You know, the visibly crying, the clearly affected. The set-losing.
Well, this was real life. Go figure.
Um, if you struggle in a bout of boxing, that sure does not make you good at boxing.
I’m curious… Why did you quote this bit : “where some of the crowd were allowed to punch me as well”, if you didn’t understand what it meant? Or, on the off chance you did understand it (which I doubt), were going to ignore it?
I mean -- you do get that the crowd aren’t supposed to interfere in aspiring events, right? That the point is the competition between the athletes? Because so far you seem to be fine with the idea that buying a ticket to watch entitles you to actively take part. Hint: it doesn’t.
Sporting, not aspiring. Fucking autocorrect.
Original text: “It wouldn’t make me bad at boxing if I struggled in a bout where some of the crowd were allowed to punch me as well, in between rounds.”
What John saw: “It wouldn’t make me bad at boxing if I struggled in a bout.”
Fascinating stuff!