You folks know that I’m the LAST person to follow professional sports of any kind - notably the popular ones, like baseball (at least, until the Red Sox are about to choke going into - or during - the World Series). That said, I do occasionally watch TV - broadcast news, even. Well, color me surprised when I saw the severely-arrogantly-named opinion segment, “The World According to Gary”, by Gary Radnich on KRON (you know, those locals out there, the rechristened “Bay Area News Station”-because-we-lost-our-NBC-affiliation?). This guy went off on the recent Oakland A’s-Texas Rangers brawl in which a fan got “Geraldo-ed” and said while the fan should sue for as much money as she could get (my eyes began to roll there), that all of this is really the fault of the fans. Sure, he admitted, the behavior exhibited by Frank Francisco was inexcusable. But fans shouldn’t heckle! He’d been around his fair share of pro athletes and these guys make ridiculous amounts of money and they’ve led sheltered lives since their teens. So fans shouldn’t heckle.

I’m sorry, but the few games I’ve gone to and everything I’ve grown to know about baseball is that heckling is part of the deal. It always was. His opinion piece struck me as if nobody had heckled at a baseball game until that woman’s husband opened his mouth that night. Heck, the classic baseball movies always have scenes of heckling. I know you can’t presume that if you see it in a movie that it’s real, but all those filmmakers must have gotten inspiration for those scenes somewhere…

From what I’ve been seeing around the web and such, for some odd reason, everybody agrees with this “blame the fan” theory. I just don’t get it. Fortunately it doesn’t seem as though I’m alone here, as someone who gets a lot more eyeballs than me (nevermind the fact is way more informed on sports), has written a more eloquent response to this theory. Personally, I find this partial-defense of Francisco appalling. I’ve never been comfortable with pro baseball players since the strike way back when, and for someone to excuse Francisco’s behavior because he’s rich and “special” in some way is just sickening. Like Kaufman wrote, if you can’t handle the heckling - get another job. Lord knows you shouldn’t be priviledged enough to earn your living playing a game.