Ketel Marte received a nice ovation when his name was announced pregame during lineup introductions on Wednesday afternoon at Rate Field.
As Marte made his way to the plate in the first inning, the Chicago White Sox placed a message on a video board reading “Baseball is family. The White Sox community supports Ketel Marte.”
Before the game, Sox manager Will Venable was among those to offer an apology to the Arizona Diamondbacks second baseman a day after a 22-year-old fan in the stands yelled a derogatory comment about Marte’s late mother during a seventh-inning at-bat in Arizona’s 4-1 win over the White Sox.
The fan has been banned indefinitely from all major league stadiums, The Associated Press reported.
“No players should ever have to be subjected to that kind of stuff from fans,” Venable said before Wednesday’s game. “That is not reflective of anything that I’ve seen from these White Sox fans. They’ve been extremely positive and extremely supportive and, for Ketel to have to experience that, was extremely disappointing. I sent my apologies over to them last night.
“Apologize again for what is not representative of how our fans behave and just something that no players should be subjected to.”
Marte was seen in tears on the field Tuesday. Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo put his arm around the visibly upset Marte and consoled him during a pitching change in the bottom of the seventh.
The security staff at the ballpark, according to a White Sox spokesperson, relayed that the fan was “very apologetic and remorseful after the fact, and admitted to being very inappropriate and stupid with his comments.”
Lovullo and bench coach Jeff Banister asked for the fan to be removed from the game. Before Wednesday’s series finale, Lovullo said he “had little bit of an interaction with the fan” as he was yelling at Marte.
“He wasn’t getting it and was very pompous, and it didn’t sit right with me,” Lovullo said. “It was just a gross comment you wouldn’t say about anybody, let alone someone who lost their mom. We need better baseball fans. Baseball deserves better.”
Marte’s mother, Elpidia Valdez, died in a car accident in the Dominican Republic in 2017.
Sox infielder Josh Rojas, who played for the Diamondbacks from 2019-23, called Tuesday a “tough situation.”
“You feel for him,” Rojas said. “It’s sad. It’s sad to know that fans go to that point to try to chirp. I think the biggest thing that comes to mind is fans kind of get caught up in the sport and forget that we’re still human beings.
“I think when something like that happens, it kind of opens people’s eyes to remember these are real humans with real feelings and real stuff going on outside of the field.”
Rojas described Marte as “a great teammate.”
“Always keep it loose, always keeps it fun,” Rojas said. “You could see it with Torey going up to him and (Geraldo Perdomo) putting an arm around him — when something like that happens to a guy that means that much in the clubhouse, you see quite a bit of guys come over and try to console him.”
Lovullo told the Arizona Republic: “I just reacted as a dad would when I went out to change pitchers. I could see he was sobbing. It hurt.
“(I told him): ‘I love you and I’m with you, and we’re all together and you’re not alone. No matter what happens, no matter what was said or what you heard, that guy is an idiot. It shouldn’t have an impact on you.’”
Venable praised the Diamondbacks manager for how he responded to the situation.
“You know there are lines you cannot cross and you know when you hear it, you’re always going to speak up for it, and I thought Torey did a great job of handling that last night,” Venable said of Lovullo. “There’s lines and you can’t cross them.”
Marte declined to comment on the incident through a team official. Diamondbacks shortstop Geraldo Perdomo said the fan “should be banned, for sure” and called for Major League Baseball to intervene.
“That can’t happen,” Perdomo said. “We can’t continue to do that … here in MLB.”
It’s a step the Sox and all of MLB took Wednesday.
“I know that there’s precedent for those types of things,” Venable said. “That type of behavior is not acceptable here. Absolutely, anybody who is engaging in that kind of stuff is not going to be welcome.”
The Associated Press contributed
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