FYI:
He's wondering where 'the disgrace' took place
By Will McDonough, Globe Staff, Globe Columnist, 10/19/99
I'm still looking for the national disgrace. Nearly 24 hours after the event, I can't find it.
I've looked, believe me.
Like most of you, I watched Game 4 of the Red Sox-Yankees American League Championship Series on television Sunday night, going to sleep with the notion that Boston had shot itself in the foot mostly with some terrible fielding, but had a little help from the umpiring.
Little did I know that the fan reaction to this would be deemed a national disgrace to our fair city by the local media.
Did I miss something, beyond plate umpire Al Clark overreacting to the situation and clearing the field of players because some fans threw paper cups and empty plastic soda bottles onto the field? An empty soda bottle weighs one ounce.
Certainly, I must have missed something.
So early yesterday morning I called Joe Mooney, head groundskeeper at Fenway Park, to get a listing of the damage.
''There was none,'' said Mooney, the straightest of all shooters. ''My crew cleaned the entire field after the game. All we found was paper cups and empty plastic bottles. Those soda bottles. There was nothing else.''
Was there anything unusual about the amount of debris? ''We filled about two or three trash bags. That's all. That would be typical of about what we get on the average Saturday afternoon game during the season when we clean up. There were no metal objects. Nothing that would be of danger to anyone.''
Maybe the damage was done elsewhere.
So I decided to track down Dr. Mike Foley of Arlington, who has headed up the first-aid room at Fenway Park for years.
How many wounded did Foley have to treat Sunday night?
''None. No one was hurt. I stayed in the medical room for two hours after the ballgame and we didn't have one person show up,'' he said. ''I can't understand all the reaction to this. The Red Sox crowd is the best in sports. Our fans are great. What happened here Sunday night was so overblown it's not even funny.''
Perhaps the bad stuff took place elsewhere in the park, out of the view of Mooney and Foley. Let's try the Boston Police Department to see how many of these ''villains'' who disgraced the Olde Towne, and the Old Towne Team, on national television had to be apprehended.
''There were no arrests inside Fenway Park,'' said Sgt. Margot Hill, spokeswoman for the Police Dept. ''Over the course of this series about 30 people have been arrested. All of those arrests were outside of the park for reselling tickets [scalping] or selling illegal merchandise. There were no arrests at the park for this game, and I'm not aware that anyone even was evicted.''
Have we got it all covered here? Could something have slipped past us to trigger this national disgrace? Maybe these alleged culprits left Fenway Park by another avenue? How about ambulance? Perhaps those who were wounded in this ''near riot'' were brought to local hospitals?
''We had no calls to Fenway Park for that game,'' said Tom Lyons, who is the spokesperson for Health & Hospitals, E.M.S. Transport. ''I've checked around and no ambulances were called to Fenway Park.''
Where is Inspector Clouseau when we need him? Was he behind home plate dressed up as umpire Clark? What did Clark see to trigger an eight-minute delay?
Might Red Sox public relations director Kevin Shea know?
We asked how many players on either side were hit by flying objects. ''None that we know of. If there were, no one said anything to us,'' he said.
How about umpires? ''None that we know of.''
So let's get this straight. We had a ''national disgrace'' and a ''near riot,'' yet no one is hit, injured, arrested, apprehended, evicted, or even treated by a doctor.
As Bob Costas might say, go figure.
Here's what I figure. The umpires in this series, supposedly the best the American League has to offer (we don't have to imagine what the rest are like because we see them all season), have been terrible. They're even worse than the Red Sox' defense, which lost the game - not the umpires.
Clark was no bargain. Where was the 2-2 pitch to Darryl Strawberry, the pitch before he hit the home run? Where was the 2-1 pitch to John Valentin in the eighth? TV analyst Tim McCarver said, ''You don't usually see that called a strike.'' Clark called it a strike to bring the count to 2-2, instead of 3-1.
Clark gladly used the Jimy Williams ejection in the ninth, responding to another bad call at first, when Nomar Garciaparra beat out a hit only to be called out. When Williams reacted, he was tossed. The fans then started throwing paper cups and empty plastic bottles, Clark called a halt to play, and huddled with his co-conspirators in the middle of the infield, supposedly out of harm's way, or about 100 feet from the closest grandstand.
Now here's what I want you to try today. Take an empty paper cup, go out in the backyard or the street, and see how far you can throw it. Take an empty plastic bottle, which registers no weight on the average bathroom scale, and see how far you can throw it. Then whack yourself in the head with it and see if it hurts, because it won't.
Clark skillfully used the crowd to try to take the onus off a pitiful performance by his crew. The Yankees don't need their help. They can do it on their own. If anyone deserved to be arrested Sunday night, it was the six men on the field masquerading as big-time umpires. They were the disgrace.
Will McDonough is a Globe columnist.
This story ran on page E01 of the Boston Globe on 10/19/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
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[Edit: Kind of fitting that a Red Sox fan gets to grub #100 on the Mets thread, huh? At least I've got that going for me <VBG>.] |
