Rant #2,881: Sideshow

On Saturday afternoon in the Bronx, the New York Yankees were down by a run in the bottom of the ninth to the newly minted Cleveland Guardians, but the crowd was anticipating that this game was far from over.
 
A hard hit to leftfield saw the Guardians' outfielder run into the wall and nearly knock himself out trying to grab the rocket, and all of a sudden, the Yankees had tied the score.
 
But those in the leftfield stands decided that it was time to taunt the Guardians’ leftfielder who tried to make the play, taunt him to the point the Guardians’ centerfielder crept up to the stands using the advertising sign’s cage and have some actual face-to-face time with those fans as his mate was being attended to in the outfield.
 
This only served to outrage the paying customers in leftfield even more, and when the Yankees ended up winning the game a few moments later in a walk-off, that should have been that as the Yankees celebrated on the field and most of the 40-something-thousand people who were there cheered for their heroes.
 
But those in the leftfield stands couldn’t take it all in.
 
They threw bottles, cans and whatever else they could find at the exiting Guardians, so much so that the Yankees had to end their on-field celebration to run out to left field and plead with the fans to stop doing what they were doing.
 
It was a horrific scene, painting Yankees’ fans as crude and horrid, and once again, stoked up the lawlessness that has killed New York City, with the video of this idiotic behavior being seen around the country and the world.
 
Yes, the behavior of those fans just kicked up the belief that New Yorkers are violent and were simply acting as they do because New York City itself has become an anarchy, littered with assaults, shootings and other non-social behavior … and it has now come to Yankee Stadium, one of the city’s meccas, too.
 
Yesterday’s game had no such incidents, as the Yankees quickly disposed of the Guardians for a three-game sweep.
 
But the Yankees took extra precautions, hyping up their security patrol, and vowing that they were scouring video of the Saturday game’s negative events to ascertain who was doing what, and perhaps taking further action against these perpetrators.
 
Viewing this on TV like millions of others, it brought me back to another time and place—the late 1960s and into the 1970s—when New York City had become as lawless as it is today, and yes, the original Yankee Stadium was not a safe place to be … nor was its immediate environs, the South Bronx, which had been left for dead by our politicians and leaders, and honestly, it has yet to recover.
 
You might remember that during this year’s opening day at the stadium, with the mayor in attendance, his day at the park was ruined with two separate shootings in the borough—just blocks away from the stadium—as he ate his peanuts and Cracker Jack.
 
But going back in time, I remember the original stadium as not being as inviting a place as it could have been and should have been.
 
I remember sitting in the bleachers in right field, and being told beforehand to watch myself there, because strange things often happened in that part of the stadium, including people getting pummeled in the bathroom with bats in the bathrooms during the annual “Bat Day” celebration, which forced the Yankees to lessen the bat to a real down-sized replica bat rather than a bat that you could actually hit a baseball--or someone's head--with.
 
I remember the “tossed salads,” that I had to put up with during that game and the vileness of those who sat there—these were NOT the benign “Bleacher Creatures” of today’s vintage—and the experience was such a rough one that I swore I would never sit there again, and I never did.
 
And it wasn’t just Yankee Stadium.
 
The old Shea Stadium was not immune to this idiotic behavior.
 
I remember that I went with a few friends to the 1973 playoff game between the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies, and I attended the fateful game where competing shortstops—the Mets’ Bud Harrelson and the Phillies’ Larry Bowe—got into e real, honest to goodness fight on the field.
 
It enraged the crowd so that yes, people started to throw garbage onto the field, but the worst one came from my section, just a few rows in front of me.
 
In those days, you could bring just about anything you wanted into these stadiums, and one spectator brought in a long0fluted wine bottle that was shaped like a javelin.
 
When all this stuff was happening, he hurled the long-fluted bottled just like a javelin to the field, and just missed hitting the third-base coach with his throw.
 
Back then, security just took things differently, and I honestly don’t remember what happened to this guy, if anything.
 
Then, much later in time, back to old Yankee Stadium, I attended a World Series game between the Yankees and the Atlanta Braves, the series dubbed “The John Rocker World Series” because the volatile and outspoken pitcher was on the Braves.
 
The security detail at the Stadium was astounding for that Series, with security, NYPD police and undercover cops stationed at every turn.
 
Yet, in the section I was in in the upper left field stands, a fan wearing full Braves’ regalia was almost thrown over the end of the stands up there, and he had to be rescued by security before the act was finished for his own safety.
 
Saturday’s incident at Yankee Stadium brought me back to those times, when you couldn’t even sit in a Stadium enjoying a game on a nice afternoon without incidents happening around you.
 
And in today’s world, the actions of these supposed fans simply reinforced the fact that New York may be open … but who wants to really go there right now?