It goes like this: if you have a problem with a pair of Yankee Stadium jerks getting banned indefinitely for interfering flagrantly with a player in the World Series, I have a problem with you. And I don't care if the player with whom you interfered was Mookie Betts or Moe Baloney.
Austin Capobianco and John P. Hansen were banned indefinitely last week "from major league stadiums, offices, and other facilities." MLB sent the pair a letter banning them concurrently "from attending any events sponsored by or associated with MLB. Please be advised that if you are discovered at any MLB property or event, you will be removed from the premises and subject to arrest for trespass."
The play in question happened in the bottom of the first, Game Four, last October's World Series. Betts ran Yankee leadoff hitter Gleyber Torres's drive to the wall and took a flying leap, his glove hand stretched upward, trying for the ball. He had the ball in his glove squarely enough. That's when Capobianco and Hansen reached out, one grabbing Betts's wrist and the other trying to grab the ball out of Betts's glove.
Outfielders are taught to steal home runs back from over fences. They're also taught to turn foul flies into fly outs if they can get gloves on them and yank them back. I'm not sure if they're taught how to defend themselves against overzealous fans who think they have the right to obstruct players from making plays at or over the fences by hook, crook, or anything else short of mutilation they can think of.
Which wasn't exactly the sentiment Capobianco expressed after they were ejected from Yankee Stadium. As he told ESPN, "I patrol that wall and they know that." That sounded as though someone in the Yankee organisation died and left Capobianco to play fence field in the will.
But the pair changed their stance when interviewed subsequently by Barstool Sports. Capobianco acknowledged they'd "crossed the line" taking hold of Betts's wrist. Betts may have waved the play away postgame himself, but come December he wasn't having it.
"I get them trying to get the ball. Cool," the Mookie Monster told 2024 Back That Year Up with Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson on the Peacock network. But, like, you tried to grab my s--t. I was in the moment. So I thought about throwing a ball at them. And then I realized, 'Mook, you ain't gonna do s--t. Go back to right field'."
When the incident actually happened, Barstool Sports writer Tommy Smokes didn't exactly feel all that sympathetic to Betts or all that outraged by Capobianco and Hansen, Capobianco in particular. "This guy is everything that a Yankee should fan be," Smokes wrote. "A loud, passionate, Italian greaseball who will do anything it takes to help the team win. We just did a full interview with him linked above that'll be out everywhere else soon and as he told us, 'I wasn't trying to get the ball or to hurt him, I was just trying to extend the at-bat.' And if you can't respect that, then I don't respect you."
If you can't look at that video and objectively find it hilarious, then I know everything I need to know about you as a person. I know what you stand for . . . It's such a clear divide between people who laugh at that and people who want this guy thrown in prison. Even Mookie Betts after the game last night seemed to not care. People are acting like they decapitated him. He acknowledged to us that the friend probably shouldn't have grabbed his hand, and that's true, but let's not pretend like he tried to [fornicating] decapitate him. All the main fan was trying to do was the get the ball out of the glove and extend the at-bat. The Yankees were down 3-0 in the World Series and you do whatever it takes to extend the at-bat for your guy at the plate.
Who is "you?"
Fans in the stands are permitted to "do whatever it takes" to extend the home player's plate appearance? Betts is to blame because Torres swung late on a 1-0 pitch and sent it foul to the right side? Fans in the stand wearing the home team's jerseys are thus auxiliary players entitled to make or break plays? Thank God and His servant Col. Ruppert that most fans, even most Yankee fans, would answer all the above with a resounding "You're kiddin', Spike."
"This is just a classic baseball moment that had no real consequences other than bringing the Yankee crowd alive and keeping their season alive," Smokes wrote further. "Anthony Volpe['s grand slam in the third] helped, too. But if the Yankees come back and win the series, then this man deserves a parade float and a spot in Monument Park." Let me guess. Smokes would have been ready to hand Jeffrey Maier the keys to the city and maybe his own private New York subway car.
I'm reasonably certain that there were and are others who think classic baseball moments such as that provoke not monuments but karma. Just ask every Yankee fan who in the ballpark for Game 5. You know — the game after the Yankees won Game 4, 11-4. The game following the only Yankee win of a set in which they just did out-hit, out-run, out-slug, and out-pitched the Dodgers. The game they thought the Yankees had in the bag with Gerrit Cole on the mound and a 5-0 lead, until the Bronx Boneheads ordered up an on-field sando* in the top of the fifth.
The game the Yankees lost after reclaiming the lead briefly enough with Giancarlo Stanton's sixth-inning sac fly, a lead lasting only long enough for the Dodgers to overthrow it with a pair of eighth inning sac flies the Dodger bullpen made stick.
Capobianco and Hansen were probably lucky that being ejected from Game 4, and now banned indefinitely from anything MLB from the ballpark to the back lot of spring training to possibly the team stores, too, are all they've received. Yankee fans who've come to believe karma to be the bitch as which she's so often advertised would probably like to give them a parade, all right. Preferably onto and off the Triborough Bridge and into the East River.
* "Sando" — Slang for "s--t sandwich," created and popularised online — and on numerous t-shirts — by Las Vegas YouTube slot machine star Vegas Matt.
Leave a Comment