What Gets You Banned From Baseball For Life?

The Jarren Duran story this week has a lot of Red Sox fans asking a pretty simple question: what actually happens to the guy?

During Tuesday's loss to the Minnesota Twins, cameras caught Duran flipping off a fan after grounding out. He explained himself postgame. A fan had told him to kill himself. MLB and the Twins both say they are investigating.

If they find the fan, history tells us what comes next. A lifetime ban from every MLB stadium in the country. It has happened before, and for reasons that might surprise you.

Here is what has gotten fans banned for life from Major League Baseball.

Telling a player to kill himself. When a fan in Cleveland said something similar to Duran during a game last April, that fan was ejected on the spot and banned from all MLB ballparks for life. The Twins fan this week is looking at the same outcome if investigators can identify him. -si.com

Mocking a player's dead mother. Last June, a 22-year-old at a Chicago White Sox game made a derogatory comment about Arizona Diamondbacks star Ketel Marte's mother, who died in a car accident in 2017. Marte was visibly brought to tears at the plate. The fan was banned indefinitely from every MLB stadium.

Throwing something at a player. In 2021, a fan at Yankee Stadium threw a baseball that hit Red Sox outfielder Alex Verdugo in the back. Lifetime ban, all 30 parks.

Racial slurs. A fan at Fenway Park was banned for life in 2017 after directing a racial slur at a national anthem singer.

Here is the catch though. MLB does not require ID to buy a ticket, which means a banned fan can often just buy one through a friend and walk right back in.
A lifetime ban sounds serious. Whether it actually means anything is a different conversation.