This week saw another black eye given to baseball as well as all of professional sports.
In a game where the Oakland A’s hosted the Texas Rangers, an argument broke out between heckling fans and the Rangers bullpen. Like my mom used to say, it’s all fun and games until someone throws a chair… What?
Yep, sure enough Rangers reliever Frankie Francisco tossed a chair into the crowd mid-melee, breaking the nose of a woman who was just there to enjoy the game. The replay showed that she was not even involved in the incident and was actually seated about 5-6 seats away from the ruckus.
It was reported that the pitcher (of the chair), was arrested the next morning for assault.
I wonder if a chair is considered a deadly weapon?
This brought to mind the charges against Allen Iverson (for which he was later pardoned) following a brawl at a Hampton bowling alley, in which a woman was struck … by a chair!
There’s an odd pattern developing here.
Remember when Bob Knight threw the chair onto the basketball court?
It’s not just chairs, and it’s not always the athletes doing the tossing. In April of 2003, Texas right fielder Carl Everett was hit in the back of the head with a cell phone thrown by a fan in the Rangers’ 12-2 loss to the Oakland Athletics. Everett was hit four days after umpire Laz Diaz was attacked by a fan at U.S. Cellular field in Chicago during a White Sox-Royals game.
Todd Bertuzzi broke that guy’s neck, Tyson bit Holyfield’s ear off, and it doesn’t just happen in American sports. European soccer fans have made it a habit.
On May 29, 1985 two fans turned an argument into a full-scale riot, the Italian fans tried to storm the English stands, knocking down a cement wall killing 39 people.
Some stories are more bizarre than others, but this leads to a bigger question: Who is to blame?
I say both.
As a professional, you have to accept that you are going to have to deal with a certain level of crap (being thrown at you on a daily basis). It’s reality and it happens to all of us. The difference is that in the real world when a cashier flies over the counter and pounds a customer to the ground, they go to jail.
On the other hand, the same can be said for the fans. Some of these idiots think that paying obscene amounts of money for tickets somehow gives them the right to say, throw whatever they want at whoever they please without any repercussions, let alone retaliations?
Give me a break.
Like I always say, animals should not try to act like humans.