AlexanderP
The New York Yankees did not have a good weekend. Not only was the team swept by the Toronto Blue Jays, which trimmed their lead at the top of the AL East from 4.5 games to just 1.5 come Monday morning, but – adding injury to insult – left-fielder Brett Gardner was hit in the head with a home run ball thrown back from the stands by an angry fan.
Shortly after Jose Bautista launched a Masahiro Tanaka offering into the bleachers, the all-star outfielder was clocked in the dome by a teenager with a gun. (Henry Rowengartner, is that you?)
That wasn’t the only case of fan-player interaction during the series. Another Yankee fan, this one in the front row of the left-field bleachers (what the hell are they serving in left-field at Yankee Stadium?), did his best to rob Mark Teixeira of a home run, knocking a ball that was destined for the seats back into the field of play. Manager Joe Girardi challenged the call on the field – that the ball stayed in the park – and eventually the umps ruled in his favor, awarding “Tex” the homer.
Then Teixeira got up-close and personal with a fan down the first-base line while both were going after a foul ball.
This last one was the final straw for Teixeira, who railed against the Bronx faithful after the game. While Mark might be overreacting just a tad to his collision with the fan, the antics from the Yankee fans do raise the question: do you want your team to lose??
Those Yankee fans aren’t the first to screw over their side, of course, and they won’t be the last.
On that note, let’s set the odds on which fans will be the next crop to screw their own team out of an catch or a homer or just a great deal on a brand new Subaru.
Odds on which fans will detrimentally affect their team next:
Chicago Cubs: 10/1
- You know where this is going.
Boston Red Sox: 15/1
- Things can get real weird at Fenway, which isn’t a surprise, given that the stands tend to be filled with people from Boston. With the Sox out of contention, don’t expect a lot of restraint from 40,000 drunk Massholes.
Miami Marlins: 18/1
- The Marlins have the worst record in the Majors. They just got past by the Phillies. If I was a Marlins fan, I wouldn’t think twice about opting for a souvenir instead of helping the vastly underperforming team to a meaningless win.
New York Mets: 18/1
- Any fan base with grammar this atrocious is probably too stupid to realize when it’s going to hurt its team. The fact that some Bronx residents spurred this whole debate doesn’t provide much confidence that the good people of Queens are much better.
New York Yankees (again!): 40/1
- Teixeira’s exhortation to the fans should get the point across.
Toronto Blue Jays: 40/1
- Blue Jay analyst Gregg Zaun already taught Fan Behavior 101 to the good people of Toronto during a recent broadcast. On top of that, they’re freakin’ Canadians. They’ll probably get out of the way for the visiting team, too, and then apologize for the butt-whooping the Jays just laid down.
St. Louis Cardinals/Kansas City Royals: 45/1
- If there’s one thing that All-Star Game voting taught us this year, it’s that the people of Missouri are loyal to a fault. With the Cards and Royals leading the NL and AL, respectively, expect the fan bases to be on their best behavior.
Tampa Bay Rays: 50/1
- The Rays should be safe. They are still in contention, plus there have to be fans in the first place.
(Photo credit: John (flickr) [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/legalcode]. Photo has been cropped.)
