One week into a season, it’s a little unusual to see two teams with sub-par records hate each other so intensely. Unless, of course, you’re the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. The Yankees won 2-1 in New York, the Red Sox won 2-1 in Fenway. Both have 4-5 records, and have each only recorded one series win all season (they were shellacked by the Blue Jays and Orioles respectively)…against each other. Add to that pretty awful pitching from both sides, and some never-say-die moments from both teams, and it’s been a hell of series.
Unfortunately these two early-season series will always be remembered for the bottom of the 8th in an another action-packed Game 3 at Fenway.
If you missed it, here’s what happened…
Yankee rightfielder Gary Sheffield goes for a ball that is skidding around the Pesky Pole area. Fans are dangling their hands down, all wanting a souvenir. One fan, who’s nowhere near the ball, decides it might be a fun move to swipe at Sheffield. Sheffield turns around and remonstrates with the fan who did it. The Yankee right-fielder than can be clearly seen taking a swipe at the idiot in question, and then clearly backing down from what would have been the most memorable sucker-punch of the whole baseball season. Fans and players go mad, and debris is thrown onto the field. Boston fans blame Sheffield for the incident, whilst ESPN commentator Chris Berman, a die-hard Red Sox fan himself, is pretty much giving the player a standing ovation for his actions. Whilst we can see where both sides are coming from, why isn’t someone talking to Theo Epstein, trying to make sure it never happens again? It shamed the Red Sox organization as well as the Yankee-haters themselves.
Don’t get me wrong, both Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium (both of which I have visited) are both great parks for fans to abuse and cheer on the players.
However, geographically, they are poles apart. Yankee has two high walls on the left and right field lines, allowing plenty of taunting room for fans (and believe you me, there’s a lot of it), but also allows as much room for the player to make a play when he needs (remember Hideki Matsui on Opening Day?) With Fenway, it’s Green Monster on one side, and all hell breaking loose on the other at the right-field ‘Pesky Pole’. In New York, the police are everywhere, ready for trouble. At Fenway, police and teetotallers are equally as commonplace. By the 8th, fans are so wasted that right field becomes battle royale- particularly when the Evil Empire comes to town. At Yankee they’ve made player safety their first priority in a Sheffield-like incident, in Boston it’s a fight waiting to happen.
Frankly, it’s a quite a shock that there hasn’t been a fan-player confrontations sooner down at Fenway–unless of course, you count a groundsman catching a kicking from Jeff Nelson and Karim Garcia in the Yankee bullpen during the ALCS of 2003.
We don’t know what Major League Baseball is going to do about this. My prediction is that MLB commissioner `Steroids’ Selig will probably want to crack down like NBA Counterpart David Stern, and throw out 40 to 50 game punishments for this incident- he’s already looked useless enough for the steroid debacle. The fan who got in the fight will probably sell his story to a major newspaper and try and sue- even though he could (and should) be in jail on an assault charge. If you hit a player like this one did, you’ll be lucky to get away with it. In this case, Joe Fan was, and Gary Sheffield, who’s in the public eye for a number of non-related hitting reason, won’t.
Oh, and as for the other normal incidents in this incredible 19-game saga, (bobbles, errors, and never-say-die homers) bring it on!
Oh, and a quick note for hecklers: if you’re man enough to abuse an opposing player who’s bigger and stronger than you are from the safety of your seat from the stands, don’t be too shocked if you get a reaction that’s more “punch in the face” than three-run bomb over the Green Monster.
One reply on “Here we go again….”
Ha I’d love to see sheff run into that dude on the streets. Actually favorite part of the story was the part about the stadium differences, theres an angle I didn’t read too much about, very interesting. Much better than reading about who punched who. Nice.