Turning the Other Cheek with a Baseball

Anyone who has attended a major league baseball game, especially in the bleacher section, knows that taunting of the opposing team players is common. For the most part, it’s all in fun. I can remember watching a game from the outfield bleachers of Boston’s Fenway Park in the later 1980s. The future Hall of Famer, Ken Griffey Jr., was in his usual centerfield position for the visiting Seattle Mariners, and I was so close to the field that I could see the sweat on his brow. Several fans near me kept ribbing Griffey with good-natured, creative taunts. At first, I thought Griffey may not have heard the taunts, or, was so used to this sort of thing that he had blocked them out, a kind of white noise. But one taunt was so clever, so completely off the wall (I wish I could remember it), that it caused Griffey to turn his head and smile in the direction from which it came. Touché his smile seemed to say.

But then there are counter examples. I also recall what happened to Joey Belle, a Cleveland Indians outfielder, who in the early 1990s was harassed by fans because of his addiction to alcohol.

“Hey Joey, keg party at my house after the game. C’mon over,” was the kind of thing he would hear.

Around this time, Wade Boggs, first baseman for Boston Red Sox and another future Hall of Famer, also went through a period of boorish ridicule. This was spurred by the tabloid-driven exposure of his four-year extramarital affair with a woman named Margo Adams.

As tough as it was for Boggs (he was pretty much hounded incessantly with “Margo! Margo!”), he took it in stride. Along with the perks of being a major league player, there was a price to be paid as well. The only time he felt like going after fans was when they “said things about his wife.”

Boggs tells of an incident with a fan from New York who had unremittingly harrassed him from the safety of the bleachers for over four years. But Boggs had caught him in the act when they were in close proximity.

Furthermore, Boggs had a baseball in his hand.

What did Boggs do?

One might think he’d bean the guy with the baseball. This was what poor Joey Belle did. After hearing the taunt about the keg party, he grabbed a baseball and hurled it right into the chest of the fan from about twenty feet, earning Belle a seven-day suspension.

Well, Boggs simply handed the fan the baseball and quietly said, “Don’t get on me anymore.”

I don’t know the fan’s precise reaction at the very moment he received the baseball. Boggs didn’t provide sufficient detail when he relayed the story. However, I would imagine the fan’s jaw went a little slack.

And this act of generosity, this turning of the other cheek, this meeting of a taunt with quick magnanimity -- had cool long-term effects.

As Boggs put it, “We’ve been fine ever since.”