Brian Windhorst Shoots Down SLAM-Generated Wallace/Randolph Rumors
June 10, 2009Cavaliers NBA Draft Preview Version 2.0
June 10, 2009Ok, this story has nothing to do with Jack Nicholson, or the movie “A Few Good Men”. It is a true story, and one that I love to tell. And since things have slowed down on the Cleveland sports front…
This story goes back to 1996. I was at Jacobs Field early in the season. We were playing Detroit. I got up from my bleacher seat and went looking for something to eat. I couldn’t tell you what I settled on, but I stood on the home run porch to eat and starting listening to the guys who were standing out there.
I’ve never been much of a heckler myself, but I’ll admit to being amused on occasion by some creative put-downs. The guys on the wall were letting Detroit’s left-fielder have it. Nothing incredibly creative of funny, but they just weren’t letting up. It was a constant barrage of put-downs and slams. He wasn’t hitting well on the young season, and so there were plenty of comments about hitting his weight and so forth. The left fielder was Curtis Pride.
The inning ended and the Indians came back out on defense. As usual, many of the people gathered at the wall dispersed, either to get another beer, or perhaps find their seat. I found myself at the rail. (See, when the park is full not everyone gets to stand exactly where they want. It was crowded.) I stayed there hoping for a ball. The Tigers went down quickly and Cleveland was back up.
Curtis Pride took his throws in between innings as guys found themselves back to the rail, including the hecklers. Kids shouted for the ball, but to no avail. The hecklers were now right next to me, and they started to let Pride have it again. The crowd around us was laughing at their taunts, and that of course made them do it louder and more frequently.
Curtis Pride. I knew that name, but I couldn’t quite remember why. Then suddenly it hit me. Curtis Pride, as in first deaf Major League Baseball player.
Now I had a decision to make. Do I remind the guys around me about Pride’s condition? As I was thinking this through they started the “we’ll be here all day, and we know you can hear us” routine. That was enough for me. I got their attention and told them that Curtis in fact could not hear them, that he was deaf. The news sunk in slowly, but the taunts came to a halt. After the half inning, I went to get Pepsi. By the time I came back, my place at the wall was gone, but I could hear some familiar voices. Yep. It seems that a ballgame just isn’t a ballgame to some guys if they can’t heckle the other team. So despite the fact that they were screaming at a deaf player, and they knew it, they kept taunting. And I went back to the bleachers.
30 Comments
Wow…classy guys. Nice act on your part though.
Great Article.
My guess is that once you were gone, they figured the “smart guy” was gone and they could heckle again and look bad-ass cool to those around them, instead of looking like asses to you.
Its that “HEY, LOOK AT ME!” syndrome.
Theres nothing wrong with a little heckling from the home run porch. I let Johnny Damon have it during the playoffs and got a few reactions out of him which was funny. Heckling a deaf player is just dumb and those guys were just stupid. Making fun of Damon throwing like a girl is to much fun to pass up though.
Not too cool on their part. If it had instead been Bobby Higgenson, then they would have been awesome.
I remember some people in my section once at a game riding Bobby Higginson for 5 straight innings out in right field until he gave us the old “up yours” salute…
“Making fun of Damon throwing like a girl is to much fun to pass up though.”
Or David Riske… while he’s on your team.
I got in Bobby Kielty’s head a few years ago when he was in Oakland. He went 0-5 with 3k’s if I remember correctly, and he heard about every at bat. I had everyone in 183 and most of 182 roaring ( this was after a few beers ), and at one point I finally got a tip of the cap. It’s harmless, as long as you keep it clean for the kids in the crowd.
AMC, from like 03-06 my friend had right field season tickets near the opposing bullpen…so that may have at least partially been us.
We made a special effort to catch the Tigers’ games just for him.
The best is when a heckler makes it over the air and you can hear the play-by-play guys laughing.
My favorite heckling incident was in the old stadium… We were playing the Orioles, I think it was ’92, and it’s when Mike Devereaux was in Baltimore so Brady Anderson played left field.
I was sitting with my Dad in short leftfield on the third base side. There were 2 drunk guys a little ways away… This is back in the day when the Stadium was empty and cavernous and you didn’t need to be standing on the railing to yell at a player. While the Orioles were in the field Drunk Guy #1 would yell “BRAAAAAADY!!!!!” Drunk Guy #2 would follow it with “LOOOOOSER!!!!” and for the entire game while the Orioles were in the field, that’s what they did. Nothing more, nothing less. Over and over…. and over and over. It was probably like the 7th inning and there was some pitching change when Brady walked over to rightfield and sat down, just to get out of range of those guys’ voices. It was pretty hilarious. The simplistic nature of it is what made it so genius.
To this day anytime my Dad or I hears the name Brady when we’re around each other (which obviously started happening much more when the Browns drafted Quinn) the other will say, “loser”. After hearing it about 1,000 times over the span of 3 hours it’s pretty much burned into our brains forever.
At the greatest day of baseball ever (July 4, 2005) my roomates and I trekked up to The Jake from Columbus. We proceeded to heckle Casey Blake, who was in right field. We were in the left field bleachers. We called and called for anyone but Blake. My roomate (who was wearing an airbrushed Carlos Baerga tee) tried to drum up a “Put in Carlos” chant, to no avail. We heckled our own team that day (and our livers).
I love the home run porch. I have a story about Brady Anderson too. Sometime in the 90s I went to a game with my dad, he is a big time heckler and was giving it to Brady pretty bad. Well somehow, Brady ripped his pants right on the ass. So that just opened the flood gates for everybody. It took him two inning to take us seriously and he game out with shiny new pants the next inning.
Another story involves Manny. Playing for Boston a couple years ago we were on the HR porch and we were giving it to Manny hardcore. Saying the most ignorant things ie “Hey Manny, You sit when you pee.” Well Manny decided to go off and jack two BOMBS that game. But we never let up. After the 2nd bomb he decided to walk to LF looking straight up at us and when he got to his position he took his hat off, and bowed to us, which I thought was hilarious. But he recieved a huge ovation of boos for it. So much fun.
Last year my fiance and I had bleacher seats for the Red Sox on Dollar Hot Dog night. We were all yelling stuff at Manny, and every once in a while he would turn around and acknowledge us, which lead to more boos and middle fingers. Well the guy sitting next to me was pretty much the ring leader of the Manny hating cheers. Well a Sox fan in the row in front of us had had enough and stood up and yelled ‘ You better shut your f&^%ing mouth, or we are gonna have a go!’ Well out of nowhere, a dollar dog comes flying in from behind us and blows up on this guys ortiz jersey like a mustard bomb. That started a riot and the dude next to me and the Sox fan start landing haymakers on each other. Police were called. Peace as restored, and the Manny heckling continued.
Good times.
Let’s see….
I remember telling Ricky Henderson from the bleachers once that my grandmother would steal more bases than him that year. It was a stupid heckle, but it actually got him to turn around and give me a smile.
I also remember sitting about four rows behind the hitters’ entrance to the Tigers dugout once in 2002, and poor Shane Halter was batting .194 at the start of the game. And every single time he made an out (and it was four, I believe), I just flat out SCREAMED his updated average at him when he was about 25 feet from me. My friend whom I was with said after a couple of times, “The best part about that is that you KNOW he heard it.”
One of my favorite heckling episodes was at a game at Fenway, many years ago, just after Wade Boggs’s extra-marital affair with a groupie named Margo Adams was publicized and he claimed he wasn’t at fault, as he was a “sex addict.” The Red Sox bullpen was behind the centerfield wall, in front of the bleachers where I was sitting, and you could stroll right up to the bullpen and talk to the players over the barrier. Lee Smith, the closer, got up to warm up in a close game and a couple of young ladies walked up to the edge of the pen and were trying to get his attention. Immediately, one part of the bleacher crowd starts chanting at them “Leave him alone! Leave him alone,” and the other half screamed back, “Margo! Margo!” Pretty funny watching those two shrink back into the crowd while being screamed at by thousands.
“Ricky…. Ricky…. Ricky…”
/Stadium’d
@ DP: at the old stadium, I was by a drunk fan heckling Rickey Henderson while he was kneeling in the on-deck circle. This was when he was young, with Oakland. This heckler was extremely crude, and Rickey decided he had enough, twisted around and fixed this guy with a direct street stare that said, “One more word and I’m coming into the stands after you.” I will always remember that stare. It made everyone around us go, “Oooooh.” It also made the guy shut up. Rickey’s back had been to the guy, and I don’t know how he knew exactly where the guy was to fix him with that look when he finally turned around.
At a Lake County Captains game last year, sitting in the front row on the first base side (gotta love tiny minor league ball parks), the pitcher throws one nearly out of reach of the catcher. I said “Just a bit outside”, thinking it was just loud enough for the people around me to hear. Then I see the first base coach laughing, which made the whole thing so much more funny.
I want to fight Ben Roethlisberger.
TampaBrett FTW!
Scene: 1991 Old Cleveland Stadium, seats right on the left field line (not hard to score then). My buddies and I played hooky and drove up from Cuyahoga Falls and are giving Luis Polonia the basic “You Suck” heckles. Then a few guys tell us to ask him about the 16 year olds in Milwaukee. http://www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=Luis_Polonia_1964
Luis called us gringo mf’ers and the rest of the game was a blast.
Moral of the story: No fun to heckle courageous deaf guys in left field, lots of fun to heckle pedophiles in left field
My best heckling story and one of my fondest memories dates back to the 1997 World Series against the Florida Marlins. I was 11 years old and my dad scored 2 first row tickets right on third base. Bobby Bonilla was playing third that night and was looking pretty cold the entire game (I believe it was one of the coldest world series games ever). Starting in the first inning and continuing through the rest of the game these drunk guys sitting behind us tore into Bobby with seriously no regard. I remember laughing hysterically as Bonilla kept putting his hands in his pants to stay warm while these guys relentlessly abused him about not finding anything down there and such. As you can imagine, Bonilla did not take to kindly to this and tried to avoid looking toward the stands at all costs. He even tried to give us a “come on can you just chill out”. This only instigated the entire section as more people started to take jabs. I will never forget that game, that series, or Bobby Bonilla’s pathetic attempt to dissuade Tribe fans from tearing him a new one.
You know you are heckling too much when you aren’t even heckling players anymore. My cousin and I were sitting behind home plate a few years ago, and the Tribe was down by a few runs late in the game. A foul tip went to the backstop, and as the ballboy was running out to get it, my cousin screams at the top of his lungs, “Hey Ballboy! You run like a little girl!!!” The ballboy stopped for a second and looked up in shock…I turned and smacked my cousin on the back of his head.
@ Eli..When I was young in the 90s I would always go to the porch to watch games. I went to a few Tigers games and I can assure you I have never seen anyone get nearly the abuse that Higginson got. Hilarious
I took the picture used at the top of this post 🙂
http://www.flickr.com/photos/laffy4k/36724324/
As a loyal WFNY reader, it’s always a nice surprise to see my pictures get used. Thanks, guys.
^^ Very cool! I found this using a google image search. I loved the sky in the picture, but for formatting reasons had to trim it.
That’s me in the bleachers. Third row, fifth guy to the left.
My favorite was a game at the Jake in ’94? I was in town visiting family and scored tickets out in right center… Certainly had too many ‘pops’ and seats right on the wall… The Twinkies were in town. All night long my cousin and I started in on Alex Cole with the ” AAAA – LEXXX! Get ready there gonna hit it to you!”
Late in the game a shot was hit to dead-center that just barely cleared the fence that he leapt for and was unable to pull down. Of course, right before the pitch we were laying into him… The whole section went nuts!! I remember the Tribe winning, and fireworks after the game…
Good times!!
I remember Ron Kittle when he played for the White Sox. The game was at the old stadium and we were sitting in the bleachers. We were giving him a hard time all game until he ripped a homer to center about 425 feet. It didn’t stop us fro giving it to Kittle.