OK, so the attempt by two New York Yankees fans to rip a baseball from the glove of Dodgers’ outfielder Mookie Betts during recent World Series action wouldn’t qualify as a rackable offense. Betts wasn’t injured in the process, the umpire immediately ruled Betts had secured an out and the two miscreants were summarily thrown out the stadium.
But it did feel like the latest example of anarchy in America. An almost proud dismissal of law-and-order. One of those fans—both were dressed to the nines in Yankee attire, apparently convinced they belonged on the team roster—bragged to an ESPN reporter that their actions were premeditated: “If it’s in our area, we’re going to ‘D’ up. Someone defends, someone knocks the ball. We talk about it. We’re willing to do this.”
The incident unfolded along the outfield wall in foul territory. Betts made a leaping catch on his side of the wall; he stayed in his lane. The fans, from their front-row seats, reached into the field of play, a clear case of “fan interference,” as described by Major League Baseball. One grabbed Betts’ wrist as the other pried the ball loose—two unlicensed practitioners of professional sport.
An obvious violation of spectator etiquette, no? But this sort of thing seems to be going around in the land: You do what you can get away with. Ignore red lights. Cheat on a school assignment. Cook the books and plead not guilty.
The occasion was just baseball (though sports prides itself on fairness, the ideal of a level playing field). And there were reminders of similar spectator entanglements during post-season games.
In 1996 at Yankee Stadium, a 12-year-old boy named Jeffrey Maier reached over the outfield wall to catch a ball headed his way and deflected it into the stands, which was ruled a home run for Yankee Derek Jeter. Baltimore outfielder Tony Tarasco, standing under Maier at the wall, appeared capable of catching the ball for an out, but the Yanks went on to a victory and ultimately the championship.
More famously, in 2003, Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman reached above the Wrigley Field outfield wall in foul ground and deflected a ball that Cubs outfielder Moises Alou seemed poised to catch. Maier inadvertently had benefited the home team; Bartman helped doom the Cubs’ title hopes.
But both of those were spur-of-the-exciting-moment reactions, hopes of corralling a souvenir, neither calculated to molest a player’s effort to record an out or to influence the game’s result. Neither Maier nor Bartman came anywhere close to grabbing a player’s arm or glove.
So here’s the thing. Though there was no injury to Betts, and therefore no case for assault charges against the Yankee blockheads, a New York criminal defense attorney named Martin D. Kane posted on his website that those fans nevertheless may have been in violation of New York penal code section 240.26: “A person is guilty of harassment in the second degree when, with intent to harass, annoy or alarm another person: 1. He or she strikes, shoves, kicks or otherwise subjects such other person to physical contact, or attempts or threatens to do the same….”
A conviction for harassment in the second degree, Kane wrote, “is a violation, not a crime, so it would not ultimately appear on a criminal record. However, it can result in up to 15 days in jail and the requirement to perform community service.”
Furthermore, Kane wrote, since the fans acknowledged that they had gamed out how they “would ‘D’ up” in such a situation, an injury to Betts “would have opened them both up to the greater charge of assault in the second degree, which carries a minimum sentence of two years in prison, and potentially up to seven.”
As an interesting P.S. to an informal poll taken by The Athletic—which found 62 percent of respondents suggesting a lifetime ban for the two fans, 18.2 percent for 1-5 years; 17.4 for one year and only 2.4 percent for no further punishment—a majority of students in my Hofstra University sports journalism class endorsed throwing the bums out for an extended period.
Fan behavior studies have indicated that, since the marketing of replica team jerseys to fans was cranked up in the 1980s, there has been a decided increase in spectators convinced they can affect the outcome of their heroes’ games. Too many fans think they literally are part of the team and act upon that.
But maybe those Yankee-attired knuckleheads reminded that we need to keep the jokes separate from the jocks; that all the action ought to be on the field, and the fans ought to play by the most admirable trait in sports. Which is poise—to keep your head when all about you are losing theirs.