Shannon Kobylarczyk (above, from the phone video that became her undoing) was attending one of the National League Championship Series games between the Dodgers and the Brewers at American Family Field when her interaction with another fan altered the course of her life.
Ricardo Fosado, an out-of-town visitor from L.A. who favored the Dodgers, engaged in a little friendly needling with Sharon, a passionate Brewers partisan, when the Los Angeles team took the lead. (The Dodgers eventually won the 7-game series, sending them to the World Series, which begins this week.) “Why is everybody quiet?” he asked.
Kobylarczyk was in no mood for gloating. She shouted at Fosado: “Real men drink beer, pussy!” and threatened to call I.C.E. on the apparently Hispanic spectator. She then told the man in front of her that he should sic immigration enforcement on Fosado. Now he was annoyed. “Call ICE! Call ICE. I’m a U.S. citizen, war veteran, baby girl. War veteran, two wars. ICE is not gonna do nothing to me. Good luck!” he said.
Why do we know all this? Because someone in the crowd who should have been watching the game and minding his or her own business was recording the whole confrontation.
Kobylarczyk escalated: she went to stadium security and reported Fosado for disrupting her baseball experience, or something. They ushered him out of the stadium citing “public intoxication.”
The team is the Milwaukee Brewers, mind you.
But wait! There’s more! The asshole who videoed the episode put it on social media, where it went “viral.” This resulted in Kobylarczyk being labeled a racist, so her company, a Milwaukee-based recruitment and staffing outfit called the Manpower Group, fired her ( she was the associate general counsel) and issued a standard virtue-signaling announcement to take credit for standing up for “a culture grounded in respect, integrity, and accountability.” Then Kobylarczyk was forced to quit the board of directors at Make-A-Wish Wisconsin, which also issued a statement condemning her. Naturally the Brewers also had to get into the act, so they released this statement:
“The Brewers expect all persons attending games to be respectful of each other, and we do not condone in any way offensive statements fans make to each other about race, gender, or national origin. Our priority is to ensure that all in attendance have a safe and enjoyable experience at the ballpark.”
Then the team banned both Fosado and Kobylarczyk from the ballpark forever. Yeesh! Talk about a mini-Ethics Train Wreck!
The candidates for Worst Ethics Dunce is this mess are:
A. Shannon Kobylarczyk, of course.
B. Fosado.
C. Stadium security
D. Whoever it was who took the video and posted it.
E. The Manpower Group.
F. “Make-A-Wish” Milwaukee.
G. The Milwaukee Brewers.
Let’s reduce the list to six: Fosada doesn’t belong there at all and did nothing that is outside the traditional bounds of baseball fan interaction. I’ll never forget when a somewhat intoxicated Cincinnati Reds executive sitting in front of me in the box seats behind the Reds dugout at Fenway Park turned around in his seat as the Red Sox batted with two outs and two on base in the bottom of the 8th of Game 6 in the 1975 World Series (The Carlton Fisk Game). The Sox were trailing 3-0, and he said, “You know, you should be proud of your little team for getting this far! I didn’t think they’d win a game against us!” And as he spoke, Red Sox pinch-hitter Bernie Carbo smashed a ball to center field, and I could see from the fan reaction in the bleachers where it would end up. “Turn around, asshole,” I said. “My little team just tied the game.” And I pounded him once on the shoulders.
The L.A. fan then decided to take on the mantle of a Ethics Hero by telling the press, “This is my first time at a Brewers game and I got kicked out, but you know what? I had a great experience and everybody was really friendly and welcoming. So I don’t take that one incident and label the whole entire day bad.” Then he defended his tormenter. “I don’t think she should have got fired. It’s my opinion. I think everybody deserves second chances. I think everybody makes mistakes. Nobody got hurt besides the feelings and egos. I mean, we all live another day.”
How to rub the bitch’s nose in it, Ricardo. Well played!
As for the rest, the ethics verdicts are, on a five point scale, one being the least unethical…
Shannon Kobylarczyk. Verdict: 4. The teasing about ICE was obnoxious, but she could have recovered after Ricardo’s slam dunk response, apologized, and said she was just, as they say in “The Sopranos,” “busting his balls.” Instead she unjustly reported him and had him kicked out of the game. She’s an asshole, no doubt about it.
C. Stadium security. Verdict: 1. Plainly they have been told to err on the side of making sure American Family Field is family friendly, but unless Fosada was stripping and screaming like a chicken, ejecting him based on hearsay complaint was unfair.
D. Whoever it was who took the video and posted it. Verdict: 5. An Ethics Villain. People like this are willing to ruin someone’s life to get a lot of likes and hits on social media. The proliferation of cell phone cameras has now created an environment of fear and public censorship. Someone like Shannon should be able to misbehave to one individual without getting publicly humiliated and shunned.
E. The Manpower Group. Verdict: 1. These are weenies who were willing to join a public lynch mob to get a little virtue-signaling publicity. Who is going to avoid hiring a staffing company because an associate general counsel misbehaved at a baseball game? The company weaponized the Streisand Effect, and sacrificed Kobylarczyk to do it. I hope that costs them business. It should.
F. “Make-A-Wish” Milwaukee. Verdict: 1. Same as above.
G. The Milwaukee Brewers. Verdict: 3. Banning Fosada was cynical and cowardly. But the team didn’t want to risk alienating any white supremacists holding season tickets, I guess…
Ethics Alarms 
(eyeroll) As Jimmy Durante once famously said “Heferybody wants ta get into da act.”
Well, sometimes the mask falls off the Midwestern civility, right Sharon? Particularly if the Packers or the Brew Crew aren’t getting their just desserts.
But what motivates people to turn into little behavior police and report violations on line? What was that person thinking?
Well, yeah, what were the Brewers thinking when they took the field against the Dodgers?
It certainly wasn’t what they were thinking the first 165 games of the baseball season.
Sheesh, I was depressed watching those games and I’m not really a Milwaukee fan (just a Dodger hater).
So the short version: “I will record this interaction because I care more about me than how I could possibly harm someone else.”
So, the answer is, “I can monetize this!” I’m a Luddite.
Dang! You out-word-smithed my word-smithing. Well played!!
I’m venturing into Rationalization #36: Victim Blindness. She should have seen it coming. There is sufficient evidence by now that the country is full of people with far too much time on their hands who stand at the ready to start filming every hostile encounter they observe and post it online. There is also sufficient evidence that certain openly-expressed opinions, particularly when venturing toward racial or ethnic bias are the favorite subjects of the self-anointed videographers in our culture. Anyone who thinks that it’s a good idea to start throwing the threat of ICE around in a public place is an idiot.
The workplace and the charity are in the same position as the security team. They erred on the side of caution. Someone who represented them was caught behaving badly. They are cowardly, yes, but they would have become targets themselves had they not acted. The narrative is that all white people are racist and that ICE is targeting all immigrants, not just illegal ones.
So my list is:
Oops! It’s “just deserts” as in “deserved.” Not “sweet after dinner treats.” I was afraid of “just arid lands.” Should have checked. Just saw it used in a Real Clear Politics piece. Embarrassing.
A tangential observation. I find it remarkable how involved women seem to have gotten in rooting for baseball teams over my lifetime. Watching a Red Sox home game on TV, I’m always amazed by the middle aged, well to do women sitting in super expensive seats wearing their pink Red Sox ball caps so intensely involved in the proceedings you’d think they were attending a childbirth or open heart surgery. When and how did this happen?
Great point. It’s a benefit of the gradual normalization of women in the workplace. The days of women being ignorant of sports is fading fast. Good. I used to tell my young female managers that they needed to 1) follow sports, at least to the extent of being able to discuss them competently and 2) play poker and golf. That’s how the old boy network communicates, so if you are going to break the wall down, learn their games and chatter.
Yeah. I never learned poker, much to my big firm detriment.
BUT, come to think of it, the firm was so vicious, all the guys at that game eventually got run off as well. Hah!
Senior male mentors are a great resource for women entering a male-dominated field so thanks for helping these women with useful advice. My sister’s first CPA job was in Raleigh and she quickly learned she needed to follow the Tarheels, to know what the mood would be the next day if nothing else! Don’t know that she ever developed any actual interest in the sport…
And if you’re not from around here, it’s likely you don’t realize that ‘follow the Tarheels’ for most folks meant specifically men’s basketball. Not football or baseball, those were good but side lines.
When I moved here, I was a women’s basketball fan (still am, really), and I latched onto the North Carolina women’s program under Sylvia Hatchell. Season ticket holder for 10 or 15 years — they were really good for a while, then bottomed out, and now they’re pretty good again. It’s been changing, but I’ve always contended women’s college basketball is played more on a team basis than men’s and I enjoy that.
I wouldn’t know except for my sister (you’re right!) but I did realize it was men’s basketball. I’m a very selective sports watcher… only follow events when I know someone personally. So I watched college football when I had students on the team in my class and got to know them as people, ditto track and field (had a runner as a masters student). I DID go to a women’s basketball game at UOregon once with a friend, and it was a great game! Really enjoyed it. Tickets were very cheap.
“When and how did this happen?”
Asked -n- ANSWERED
PWS
Very interesting! Thank you.