Basebrawls and More

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the main event. In this corner, with a combined weight of over one ton, hailing from all over the city of Oakland, the belligerent, the brash, the brain dead, the boozed-out brawlers … The Fans of the Oakland A’s.

And in this corner, hailing from Arlington, Texas, the terrible, the tumultuous, the talentless, Texas Rangers Bullpen. Let’s get ready to rumble!

Any true fan of baseball was wincing, and Don King was lamenting missing out on the fight of the season this week when drunken, insult-hurling fans clashed with the Texas Rangers relief staff.

Clearly this is an ugly incident and it seems to be a part of a growing trend where the lines between fan and athlete become increasingly blurred.

But what is more disturbing to me about this incident than simply the fact that Frank Francisco threw a chair that hit a lady in the head, is that everyone seems to think it’s just peachy keen if fans harass the players.

Somewhere in between the hurling of insults and lawn furniture something is getting lost here. Since when is it OK to harass players to the point that they’ll start taking a swing at you?

Whatever was said that night, I sincerely doubt it was limited to the standard “you’re a bum and you always will be.” According to Oakland Vice President David Rinetti, the fans didn’t use racial slurs or swear at the players. Because of that fact, it doesn’t breach stadium rules of conduct. So that makes it okay?

What happened to decency? Manners? Politeness? Respect? Where is the accountability here?

Now the fans can and will likely sue for damages and claim a hefty portion of Francisco’s contract. But I have to wonder, if I’m in a zoo, and I keep harassing an animal until it attacks me, isn’t that my fault? Not even a little?

During the NBA playoffs, a man purchased a courtside seat and heckled Karl Malone of the L.A. Lakers throughout warm-ups. The massive Malone walked up to the man, looked down at him, stuck his finger the fan’s chest and told him to be quiet. The man tried to sue. Even after he admitted to purchasing the ticket to harass Malone. Fortunately that case was thrown out.

I know heckling is part of the game, and there’s no way to control the conduct of every fan. All I ask is that when incidents happen such as this one, that baseball execs not bow down to the fans simply because they are customer and they have this apparent God-given right to scream at the players.

MLB owners need to stop treating their players like they’re a kind of sideshow and start treating them like workers.

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This past week I was fortunate enough to start playing baseball again for the Falls Church News Hounds. I entered the game with the notion that it would be like riding a bike. After that first game, I think a better simile would be “like riding a unicycle.” There’s clearly an adjustment period of at least one breaking-ball filled at-bat.

More notable than my failures at the plate, however, was the simple pleasure of playing a team sport with a bunch of pretty cool guys. Team sports are a simple pleasure that a lot of people give up due to old age, resorting to golf, squash, tennis and racquetball … and eventually croquet and shuffleboard. But just to take the field with eight other guys with a common purpose was a feeling I long-missed and now find relatively indescribable.

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Tuesday night HBO aired a documentary called “Nine Innings from Ground Zero.” There’s nothing I can write that can out-do the emotional presentation of how the 2001 World Series helped renew the American Spirit after the attacks of Sept. 11. Simply to watch the wild ride of that seven-game series was enough for me and if you’re a baseball fan you ought to check it out. There was simply no more complex emotion than those amazing-sad-miraculous nights when the Yanks rallied on home runs to win Games Four and Five. There was no doubt that the ghosts of Yankee stadium played a role that night. And there was no doubt that the spirits of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Thurman Munson and others had some company.

It was nice to be reminded that in the wake of that tragedy even Red Sox fans cheered for the Yankees (if even momentarily). What’s even nicer, is that the country has healed to the point where “the hated Yankees” are hated once more and all is back to normal in the world of baseball.