You need to read this.
Dear Cleveland Guardians Baseball “Fan” who “Interacted” with Jarren Duran during the Guardians/Red Sox Game on April 27th, 2025 (in which the Sox absolutely crushed the Guardians in, by the way):
I like to think that I am inherently a good person. Maybe I’m not. I’ve been told that I have a very large amount of self-awareness and I am acutely aware of my own flaws. It seems that you are completely unaware of your own. But as a supposed good person, I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt for an individual moment. For a singular sentence, I’m going to be the Devil’s Advocate:
I am going to HOPE that you are so unbelievably stupid that you just didn’t know the gravity of what you were saying.
There’s the sentence. Because the alternative is that you are a horrendous, horrible, garbage, sociopathic, uncaring, spineless heartless micro-dick piece of shit that’s willing to harm people to their core without mercy.
If you thought of it like a throwaway comment, like “You suck!” that could’ve been generalized at anybody, a) You knew it wasn’t because of what Duran had spoken about in the Netflix doc, and b) If you genuinely believe a comment like “K*ll yourself” is a harmless little throwaway that you can say to anyone, you need serious help. There is a genuine stigma around men’s mental health and men die because of it, either because they don’t seek out help or because they can’t comfortably talk about it. What you did invalidates not only Duran, and not only the men who suffer, but everyone who has dealt with any mental health issue. That includes me.
Suicidal ideation and thoughts are as serious as a chronic illness. Duran, as we’ve seen, has a hard time shutting out any and all voices, from the stands or from his own head. Internal demons are the cruelest because, in a sense, you do control them. If you make them worse than reality could ever be, you think you’re emboldening yourself. You’re not. You’re just destroying yourself on your own twisted terms.
When it gets really bad, you feel like you lose your humanity entirely. You’re numb to everything, and your brain can’t save you, and your heart can’t save you, and if you can’t save you, who can? So you shut down and imagine that you’ll feel better—or feel anything again—somewhere else. Somewhere not on Earth. Or that eternal sleep would just be easier.
Death is irreversible. Life is precious. The human body is a gift, and the brain is as much a weapon as it is a miracle. To wish for any other human being to die is never good. To tell them to their face is even worse. To tell it to a professional baseball player that you do not personally know, who is playing a game for your enjoyment that you paid to watch, a game that you didn’t leave even though the Guardians were down by 9 runs and had effectively lost, is insanity.
You wanted a reaction out of him? You got one. You got a reaction from the entire MLB fanbase and everyone hates you. Your fellow Guardians fans were graciously willing to showcase how awful you are. Now before you argue back at me: Yes, Duran talked about this publicly and “should” know people are going to use it against him. That doesn’t excuse it at all, just like how saying a racial slur is bad. And yes, Duran used a homophobic slur last year. That was bad, but he learned and grew and took his medicine. I can only pray you do the same.
I do not wish death on you. Instead, I hope you develop a sense of compassion. I hope you realize that what you said likely stems from something dark and deep within you as well. I hope you’re banned from every single MLB stadium for life as punishment. I hope you never ever ever say what you said to anyone ever again, online behind an anonymous profile or otherwise. And if you believe that your sad little life is better than anybody’s else’s, it isn’t. As we depression-sufferers know all too well, life owes you nothing. It’s up to you to make the best of it, and hurting people only makes things worse.
And as a woman with a Bachelor’s degree from a college in Ohio, I can definitively say that Ohio absolutely sucks. I’ve got a lot more vitriol for Columbus than for Cleveland, but I understand how miserable the whole state is and you’re evidently rotting there. Maybe a change of scenery would be nice! But don’t come to Boston, we’ve got enough assholes here already.
Humble yourself and get some fucking help.
Sincerely, (and VERY sincerely),
Juliet Hurwitz