Baseballhead:
Bad Fans. Bad, Bad Fans.

Michael Cox

Hey there, sailor! It's Baseballhead, who wonders why, if "Mrs. Jones" really believes female athletes are getting the short end of the stick, she doesn't quit working for Nike. However, we did find it funny when she argued that Charles "Plate Glass" Barkley is a role model after all. Bring back Spike Lee. Or better yet, Spike Jonze.

As predicted, the recent Wrigley Field brouhaha has led the press to ask why fans were so, so evil as to somehow make several Dodgers fear for their safety -- strongly enough, in fact, to mount a preemptive strike on said fans.

The charge has been led, of course, by FOX, who by utter coincidence also owns the Dodgers.

FOX Sports' Mark Gubicza, a man ill-qualified for baseball analysis in the first place, was up in arms Friday about the idea that, in his words (imagine an excited Regis Philbin-like inflection here), "fans are out of control!" Of course, such hype is necessary on FOX as they build to this fall's debut of "When Dodgers Attack," and easily understood when you stack the statement next to History's Three Great Truths:

1. Kids today are dumber than ever.
2. Impoliteness is epidemic.
3. You can't get a decent [insert food type] outside of [insert hometown].

As ammunition, Gubicza was not only armed with the Dodgers vs. Chicago footage, but with several other recent incidents, including the guy who mooned John Rocker at Dodger Stadium, and the man who apparently jumped onto the screen covering the plateside boxes at Yankee Stadium.

It became clear that Gubicza is certainly not a student of baseball history, because there is more than ample precedent for each and every fan "incident" we've seen this season. That is, except for the part where half a team wades into the stands to fight random fans.

Even the wire story covering the guy who left his wallet and cigarettes above the primo Bronx seats mentioned that it was not a unique occurrence. On Aug. 23, 1989, a guy named Steve Krisztin jumped down onto the mesh, climbed his way to the front, and swung out onto the field. How is this past weekend's incident any different, aside from the fact Krisztin was much more entertaining?

Bare buns on the field? Ever heard of a '70s fad called "streaking?" Yes, the Full Monty has occurred on many occasions in MLB ballparks -- of course, if it happens now there'll be 8,694 pundits telling you why families won't feel safe at the ol' ballgame when nudity could erupt at any time. But at the time, you had Yogi Berra quipping, "I couldn't tell if the streaker was a man or a woman because it had a bag on its head."

They'd probably shoot Morgana, "The Kissing Bandit," now.

The idiocy doesn't stop with Gubicza. Union co-boss Gene Orza, who made a tidy sum a few years back by successfully defending Lattrell Spreewell's right to assault his coach, has now come out for fan combat as well.

Speaking after Frank Robinson suspended nineteen Dodgers for even thinking about wading into the stands to pummel random paying customers, Orza claimed that not only was the offense pardonable, but that it was the players' only option. "What would have happened to these players if they didn't do anything?" Orza said. "What would their reputations within the sport have been? I don't know a manager of general manager who wouldn't have fired them."

Apparently, there's some unspoken code of honor here, like the one that states that if a batter is foolish enough to charge the mound, his whole team must exit the dugout to back him up. So if one fan causes one player a problem, we all become the Other Team. Nice, huh? This is the kind of thinking that gets bad cops in trouble, but we should tolerate it from ballplayers and their leaders?

Not intelligent enough to stop even there, Orza continued:

"Players are human beings. When you hit someone, they hit you back." Of course, no evidence of the "hitting" exists. As far as we know, it was made up as a cover-my-ass excuse once Chad Kreuter knew he'd leapt the bank into Crap Creek. Either way, it doesn't even begin to excuse the teammates who attacked other fans.

Even if the fan did hit Kreuter, the catcher's reaction stopped being simple self-defense as soon as he leapt the brick wall into the seats.

"I can assure you if Frank Robinson saw someone assault a family member, he'd leave the field and he'd be right to do so." To this, I can do no better than Robinson's retort: "A family member wasn't assaulted."

In the space of about five minutes, Orza's gargantuan mouth has done more to hurt player relations with the public than the last five years of unsigned autographs. The only way to salvage the union's reputation is Orza's immediate resignation. Admit you've blundered big time, Gene, and go back to defending bank robbers and carjackers.

Through all the rhetoric, the fact remains: several players went into the Wrigley Field stands with the intention of harming fans who did not strike the first blow. Now one of those fans is suing them, and I hope he wins, sets a precedent, and players never do this again.

Item: I know I promised last week that I'd comment on the ongoing Royce Clayton/Chad Curtis verbal battle, but apparently it's been settled. On Clayton's official site (no URL, because his provider apparently doesn't like links), his original essay on the subject has been pulled and replaced by a new piece entitled, "The Matter is Closed."

Fortunately, I managed to grab the original text (sorry, copyright laws forbid me from publishing the entire rant), but the gist was that Curtis just doesn't like rap music, and if he doesn't like rap, by God, nobody will play it in his presence. If you don't like it, tough nuts. And he speaks for the whole team.

Hmmm...where have we heard that last sentence before? Why, just last year, when he was wearing Yankee pinstripes. Asked whether he would tolerate a gay teammate like Billy Bean, Curtis replied, "If you polled every player in this room, they would tell you they wouldn't want to even have the thought that another guy on the team might be checking them out."

Apparently David Cone was out of the room, because a few weeks later, replying to the Sport magazine question, "would you have a problem with a gay teammate," the Yanks' real team leader replied simply, "No. Why would I?"

But the Yanks likely didn't let Curtis go so much for that statement as for his vitriol directed at teammate Derek Jeter, who failed to wade into the thick of a fight in Seattle, choosing instead to stay calm and talk to best friend Alex Rodriguez. Given his World Series homers, Curtis' outbursts might have been the difference between walking papers and a Scott Brosius-style contract extension.

It's interesting that while Rocker is mercilessly ripped for implied bigotry, Curtis has displayed intolerance in his actual deeds, but has received virtually no press for it. Could that be because Rocker's actually a top-tier closer, while guys like Curtis can be purchased at vending machines in AAA cities?

More likely, it's because Curtis didn't tell Sports Illustrated.

about the author

Michael Cox is proud to say that his middle name is not "F." Ask him what in the world he's talking about at mc@strikethree.com.