Eric HANNA SIGHTING???

I should be thrown out? I do believe your idea is a little overboard, don’t you?

How about anytime someone swears or jeers at a player, the entire section gets thrown out or when someone throws a homerun ball back on the field, the entire crowd gets ejected and the visiting teams get an automatic win? That would stop people!

If Victorino were offered a free agent contract for Sorianoesque figures, perhaps to join a club that has a chance to win everything (always questionable of course), he would say, no thanks cause a fan dumped a beer on me once?

Hmmm, I am guessing he would choose to get over it.

Over the course of my rambling comment, I tried to illustrate that these incidents have become fewer and further between but those that still occur are magnified out of proportion. While this crap has actually decreased, the scrutiny paid to them has grown exponentially. I think that, before we rail about fan behavior, we should consider the standards by which we judge such actions, especially when considering solutions.

The technology available to ballpark security staffs has, also, become much more complex and precise than it was 10-15 years ago. If they didn’t get the right guy tonight, considering how well the incident was documented, then the ballpark security committed the worse offense. The fan that was thrown out appears to have been guilty of laughing about the beer shower. I don’t think that’s grounds for dismissal, regardless of the fine-print-text on the back of our tickets. He suffered a personal and immediate form of embarrassment that far outweighs our collective but detached chagrin. Tonight, ballpark security got it wrong (apparently – I was 300 feet away, without a TV screen to look at) and, considering how easy it should be to get it right, they need to review just how they determine which fan to eject.

A policy of ejecting an entire row would eventually backfire, in a public and caustic way. If you throw out an entire row, then you’ll eject and alienate any number of good people, folks that are completely removed from the incident. Here’s an example – I was at both Sox/Cubs games played at Wrigley earlier this season. After the Cubs came back during the second game, a very obnoxious Sox fan and a very obnoxious Cub fan in my section got into a fist fight. Both men seemed to be extremely inebriated. Sitting next to them was a grandmotherish sort of women, white-haired and munching homemade candy from a ziploc bag. There are no TV cameras on the crowd, ever, in that part of the ballpark. Unlike the bleachers, security is relatively scarce. If policy compelled the staff to eject every fan in the immediate vicinity, what would happen when those huge men force that grandmother to leave the park? … two things … 1) those of us a bit further away, that did see the fight but were not involved, would be extremely angry and 2) the Cubs event management would get absolutely blasted on at least local, if not national, media provided that a nearby fan captured the scene on their phone’s camera (which is likely). Such a scenario is almost grotesque, at least to me, but it would often if Wrigley security employed a guilt-by-proximity scheme were employed.

So, even if such misbehavior is overblown, it’s still a problem. What are the solutions?

1. Recognize this stuff for what it is – individuals acting very badly. The instances of mass participation (everybody throws onto garbage onto the field) have, by and large, become a thing of the past. And good riddance, as they risk the team forfeiting a game. So, now, the focus has to be on individual fan behavior.

2. Take preventative action when possible. Ballpark security can’t reasonably be expected to prevent fistfights in the far reaches of the grandstand but they can be expected to assign blame immediately and, more importantly, correctly if someone interferes with either a player or a live ball. The whole Bartman fiasco taught us that – technology ensures that there’s a quick public backlash in such cases and the staff should be equally quick, in not faster, in using those resources.

3. Avoid overly drastic measures when employing preventative action. I’ve tried to show that beer showers, fights, etc., are neither new nor uniquely disturbing patterns of behavior. Moreover, the Wrigley Field staff have taken a number of preventative steps that have, in turn, helped to curtail such behavior, even if the pervasive drinking culture has become more prevalent that in past years. At the same time, we Cub fans have become more sensitive to specific incidents, the Bartman thing playing a large role in that. Rather than letting our own chagrin run amuck, we should remember just how embarrassing it would be if little old ladies from Iowa were escorted out in handcuffs solely because they sat near to a drunken idiot….

4. Punish the one person responsible harshly, thereby setting a precedent. When a fan interferes with play, make sure that the guilty individual, but only that one person, is removed from the ballpark and banned for life. Moreover, emphasive the severity of the ban – this guy, who probably considers himself a “super die-hard Cub fan” or something, will never again be able to attend a game at Wrigley Field. On top of that, why not charge him with assault? Sure, pouring a beer on someone isn’t the same thing as punching them but if you want to illustrate the consequences of bad behavior, take every step necessary to ensure that the individual is subject to the full legal repercussions. Technically speaking, that one guy assaulted Shane Victorino, so let him have it. But just him, not the guys sitting on either side of him..

then don’t go. I took my kid to a game in the bleachers on Father’s day, and it was perfectly fine for him and several other kids sitting in the area as well. And had someone in my row thrown a beer and gotten the entire row thrown out, that would have destroyed a very fine day for me and my son and wife. Why would you advocate doing something like that to innocent people?