There are so many of these messages now and, for the most part, Ryan O’Hearn simply lets them go.
People complaining about his batting line. People complaining he lost them money on bets. People sending their CashApp handles, demanding to be paid — under the delusion that O’Hearn works at the pleasure of their parlays.
The inexhaustible stream of these overly familiar, often harassing messages wears him down. One stranger reached out to him last month following a 10-4 Orioles win over the Blue Jays. “The day of Ryan was supposed to be special brother!” the stranger wrote on Instagram, noting that O’Hearn would have earned him $500 on a $200 bet with a base hit that day. “Don’t let me down next time big dawg.”
O’Hearn wrote back: “Don’t bet on me big dawg.”
It was a relatively tame tone compared to some of the hateful messages he receives. But all of them make him seethe. In the game in question, O’Hearn was 0-for-4 with a sacrifice fly and the Orioles won.
Who cares about a stranger’s bet?
“To be quite honest, it’s probably the most annoying thing ever, because I don’t give a shit about your parlay, I’m sorry,” O’Hearn told me last week. “In a perfect world, I would not respond to anything, and I would just be a robot and ignore everything that came my way. But every now and then it gets annoying.”
Legal sports betting has risen to an estimated $11 billion business, with many venues hosting their own sports books (at Camden Yards, Dempsey’s Brew Pub was replaced by a SuperBook Bar and Restaurant, which was not a sports book but a lounge where fans were encouraged to place mobile bets; SuperBook has since ceased taking bets in Maryland.). As sports gambling has kicked up, gamblers have become increasingly familiar and too often hostile to athletes at all levels. The NCAA found that 1 in 3 high-profile student-athletes receives abusive messages related to gambling, and a survey confirmed nearly 4,000 abusive messages during March Madness this year alone.
With at least 162 opportunities to bet on a team per year, pro baseball players feel a significant brunt of this rising wave of online abuse. And, from O’Hearn and the Orioles, here’s a heartfelt message:
If you’re one of those people messaging players directly about your bets, just stop.
In the offseason, O’Hearn does some light gambling on football (which MLB players are allowed to do). Directly messaging the athletes he bets on, however, is something he would never do — and the audacity some of these gamblers have leaves him awestruck.
“It’s not just ‘you suck,’ ‘kill yourself,’ ‘I hate you,’ blah blah blah, but now it’s about, ‘you owe me money — here’s my CashApp,’” O’Hearn said. “Even if the team wins, it doesn’t matter. So if you don’t cash their bet, they’re gonna message you and talk crap about you, which I think is so stupid. Just one more arbitrary, dumb thing we have to deal with. It just pisses me off.”
The Orioles are always under pressure to perform, pressure that starts with their own expectations. But gambling has put a different spin on what their performance means.
When they hit sac flies and fielder’s choices for runs, gamblers get upset that they didn’t get base hits. When they win games, gamblers quibble that they didn’t get enough strikeouts. When they hit singles, gamblers are mad they didn’t hit homers.
Even when you try to ignore it, the sheer volume of these critiques gets tiresome.
“Especially when you have a hot streak, and people think we’re gonna hit a homer every single day, or we’re gonna hit every single day, they start betting, and we go 0-for-4 with four K,” Anthony Santander said. “Professionally, I don’t care. … We say, ‘Don’t bet on me.’”
The MLB and other leagues are aware of the growing problem. The Orioles discussed it during spring training. Oakland outfielder Brent Rooker had a similar interaction with a fan who complained he missed a $21,000 parlay because of his batting line.
“My brother, I cannot even begin to express how much I do not care,” Rooker wrote.
These back and forths are on the gentle side. USA Today reported in June how MLB players have gotten death threats. In some instances, people follow them outside the ballpark, claiming the players themselves are somehow responsible for their failed bets.
While annoying, most interactions aren’t quite that serious. Some Orioles, including Ryan Mountcastle and Zach Eflin, told me they’ve simply begun to ignore social media to get a break.
Eflin got off of social media this year to be more attentive around his children, an experience he calls fantastic. But it’s still common to get Venmo requests from total strangers who expect him to cover their lost wagers — the largest request he’s gotten was for $4,500.
“Typically, I’ll just message back, ‘I’ll pray for you’ or something,” Eflin said. “If it’s social media related, if it’s severe, maybe something should be done about it. But I think, at the end of the day, if you don’t pay attention to it, to me, it never happened. Even when I was on social media, I don’t have the time of day for people I don’t know.”
Lawmakers in some states, including Maryland, have banned prop bets on college athletes partly as a result of harassment, and it’s worth wondering, if gamblers can’t behave, if other prop bets will be legislated out as well.
Ultimately, much of this falls outside the control of MLB, too. Most of these messages aren’t threatening but annoying. Players agree the severe threats should face punishment, but they’d love some of the other ones to slow down, too.
It’s not a question of whether fans can message players directly about their bets — but it certainly would show some decency to keep your parlay disappointment to yourself.
Leave these guys alone, big dawg. It’s one more thing the Orioles don’t need to worry about.
This story has been updated to clarify that the SuperBook Bar and Restaurant at Camden Yards is not a sports book but a lounge where fans can place mobile bets.
