When it comes to sporting violence, we Americans tend to be a fairly blase lot. The very notion that a soccer game could inspire tribal warfare in the stands is regarded with mild amusement and whenever a Third World soccer war spills over to result in tens or even hundreds of deaths, the carnage is treated as a curiosity of the order of an earthquake in Turkey or a train wreck in India. We don't understand hooligans, we like to think we don't have hooligans, and it doesn't affect us. Ergo, it might as well never have happened.
Even the obligatory bench-clearing brawl at our baseball games is an almost ritualistic form of combat, waged within the bounds of clearly understood rules. When a player on one team takes exception to something a fellow on the other team has done (usually this would involve a batter deciding a pitcher has deliberately tried to hit him), the principals are required to go at it in mano-a- mano combat (i.e., no bats), while the other members of the two sides pair off and grapple with one another in sort of a dignified scrum around home plate.
These rules of combat can occasionally result in an amusing spectacle. At New York's Yankee Stadium, for instance, both the home team and visiting bullpens are located beyond the fence in left-centre field and the occupants of the two warm-up areas must enter and leave through a common gate. When a fight breaks out in the infield, decorum requires the combatants on both sides first race over a hundred yards to the scene of the pig-pile, and square off only then. One such Donnybrook broke out between the Yankees and the Red Sox 25 years ago, and when Boston relief pitcher Tom House raced to the entranceway, it was to discover the late James Augustus (Catfish) Hunter politely holding the gate open for him. "See ya in there, kid," said the Yankee pitcher.
That long-ago brawl is memorable for two other reasons. One was it was one of the few baseball fights in my experience to have resulted in a serious injury: While the melee was in progress, Yankee third baseman Graig Nettles body-slammed Bill Lee, dislocating the Boston pitcher's business shoulder. ("He was never the same pitcher again," opined one of Lee's former managers in a recent autobiography.)
The other was the New York fans demonstrated their allegiance by offering token participation. Once the most serious miscreants had been ejected and the game recommenced, a Boston outfielder came perilously close to being wounded by a hypodermic needle heaved onto the field by a dope-addled New York partisan from the left-field upper deck.
Although New York fans are by reputation among the nation's most passionate, it would be a stretch to call Yankee Stadium a dangerous place. (Although Frank Cashen, then the general manager of cross-town rivals Mets, once did just that. After he referred to Yankee Stadium as "Fort Apache", Yanks owner George Steinbrenner retaliated by calling Cashen "a puffy-faced little man".)
Indeed, the most frightening night I ever experienced in "The House That Ruth Built" wasn't at a baseball game at all, but at a prize fight. The third encounter between Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton at Yankee Stadium unfortunately coincided with a New York Police strike and the only evidence of the constabulary that night was on the picket lines outside. Gangs of freely-roaming toughs took this as a licence to circulate through the crowd robbing patrons; Red Smith, the late dean of American sportswriters, was relieved of his wallet that night and I had to personally intercede with the stadium security personnel to help Harold Lederman, one of the ringside judges, escape through the visiting-team dugout after the fight lest he be lynched by angry Norton partisans.
Be that as it may, an awkward incident at Yankee Stadium last weekend ought to have shaken our smug sensibilities, but instead it appears to have been viewed only with a disturbingly tolerant amusement. In the fourth inning of Sunday's game against the Cleveland Indians, New York's Derek Jeter smashed a home run into the right-field stands. The ball bounced into a runway, setting in motion a foot-race between several fans in pursuit of the souvenir.
The winner of this little dash turned out to be a stockily-built adult wearing a blue Yankees T-shirt. The television camera zoomed in as he picked up the baseball and held it aloft. over his head. As he raised his arms in celebration, his shirt rose to reveal a holstered handgun strapped to the side of his trousers.
The MSG network even showed a replay of the home run, finishing up by circling the weapon on a telestrator. "What's up with that,?" wondered broadcaster Al Trautwig. "I have a feeling that's making the highlights tonight."
It did indeed. Two New York TV stations, as well as ESPN's SportsCenter showed the footage on that evening's newscast. The fact TV had picked up the pistol, of course, also alerted the constabulary working the stadium detail that afternoon. Before the game was over the man had been visited by both NYPD officials and Yankee security personnel, who ran a check on him. It was determined he was an off-duty corrections official (i.e., a prison guard) and that he was licensed to carry the gun.
So they let him keep it. Now, why anyone would feel the need to bring a deadly weapon to a baseball game attended by over 47,000 alcohol-fuelled fans ought to be baffling enough, but why the security people wouldn't make him check it at the door once they knew he was packing is utterly mind-boggling.
And we think sports fans in the rest of the world are nuts?
