Hands Off!

Years ago, the redoubtable Bill Veeck came up with the idea of giving an "honorary contract" to people who caught or retrieved a baseball in the stands. It was, as I recall it, a piece of paper with cheerfully faux contract language, to the effect that the recipient, having snagged the ball, was now entitled to be a big leaguer. Fun. The tradeoff, however, was that you had to give the ball back. (Veeck ran all of his baseball franchises on a shoestring and was notoriously attentive to costs). Baseball operators other than Veeck have, of course, long considered lost balls a cost of doing business, and a fan's retrieving one (or, at least the possibility of retrieving one) has always been part of the fun. In fact, so inured has the sport become to the idea of slightly used baseballs as fan souvenirs, that players regularly toss them into the stands.


But in the past few years, it seems, the essentially passive act of being allowed to collect and keep a ball hit into the stands has morphed, among the entitlement generation, into something more aggressive: Diving for balls still in the field of play. Maybe my memory's playing tricks on me, but I don't really remember, as a kid or young adult, seeing people in the bleachers or near the foul lines reaching over to snare batted balls. In a recent game in St. Louis, a fan reached over the railing and got himself involved in a play, and the TV announcers said that he was subsequently escorted, as a matter of policy, to a different section of the stadium. This policy is a heartening development, but, in this view, insufficient. Interferers should be unceremoniously tossed out of the building, and an announcement should be made explaining what happened and why. No one will think baseball is being fan-unfriendly -- apparently its biggest fear in all of this -- when it boots the front-row folks who think their ticket entitles them to a piece of the action. Truly mystifying is the notion that a fan interfering with what would have been, say, a run scoring double is just part of the game.

We all remember the contretemps between fan Steve Bartman and player Moises Alou during the 2003 NLCS. And there was a dust-up a while back between outfielder Gary Sheffield and a fan during a game in Boston, in which opinion went back and forth as to what actually transpired and who was at fault, until team officials finally concluded the obvious -- the fan was.

But seat occupiers in the first couple of rows in stadiums across the land continue to stick their body parts into the playing field, trying to touch the pelota and all too often succeeding.

Remember a few years back when a 12-year-old boy, in game 1 of the ALCS, reached over the wall and made a grab for a fly ball – a ball that was still in the field of play – and turned an almost certain putout into a home run, altering both the course and the outcome of the game? The kid definitely did a not-good thing. True, a thing not punishable by a stretch in the joint, but, the presumably impetuous nature of the act notwithstanding, probably warranting a charge of something between misdemeanor thoughtlessness and aggravated brat-hood. But did the adults in this scenario wag their collective finger at him and tell him not to act like a boor and to keep his paws inside the grandstand when he goes to the ballpark? No. On the contrary, they turned him into a celebrity. Okay, so he's not a felon. But a celebrity? What's wrong with this picture?

If the cameras were to capture, and millions therefore witness, the boy catching a home run in or near his seat but outside the field of play, it would have been seen rightly as the thrill of a lifetime for a 12-year-old and a Rockwellian piece of Americana that would doubtless merit his 15 minutes of fame and the limo rides and talk-show appearances that went with it. Instead, though, he was celebrity-fied for an act, no matter how innocently and/or impetuously it was undertaken, that he should have been chewed out for on the grounds that he made, at the very least, a big nuisance of himself.

And what if the umpire had made the correct call, fan interference, and no home run had been involved? Well, my guess is that what in fact turned into instant celebrity for the lad would have instead been continued and richly deserved anonymity, or possibly even vilification, and that would have been the end of it. But by some impenetrable logic, the fact that the play ended up as a home run conferred on the act of disrupting a public entertainment event a bizarre approbation. (Do I detect some class resentment here -- innocent 12-year-old disrupts fun of greedy millionaire athletes and, by golly, good for him? The lad can take solace from the fact that although he didn't catch the ball, at least he succeeded in knocking it away and disrupting the game, and of that much, he, his parents, and the mayor of New York can be proud?)

Here’s my rule for sports spectators: If there is contact between you and a player or a ball on the field side of the imaginary plane that separates the stands from the playing surface, it is, by definition, your fault. No part of your body is to be within the playing area. Under any circumstances. Ever. Violation of this rule means you are thrown out of the stadium, at least. No reaching for foul balls. No reaching for fair balls. No touching of participants.

What a ticket to a sports event buys you, no matter what your age: The right to park yourself in a designated area – the stands – and watch. And, okay, yell, if you’re so inclined. It doesn't buy you the right to participate. It doesn't buy you the right to touch anybody or anything on the field. It doesn't buy you the right to pursue loose baseballs anywhere but in the stands. Violation? Out you go.