Rangers vs. A’s Fans

OK, so this whole thing between the Rangers bullpen and the fans of the Oakland A’s has me extremely pissed.

For those who don’t know, the members of the Texas Rangers bullpen got into an altercation with the fans behind the bullpen. One Texas pitcher, Frank Francisco, during the altercation through a chair into the stands and hit a lady on her nose, breaking it.

First, let me say I’m extremely pissed at Francisco and hope MLB suspends him for at least the rest of the year and the Rangers consider demoting him. Please note that I am a Rangers fan and Francisco’s been pretty good this year. Still, this was unexcusable.

But I’m more upset at the A’s fans. What is coming out of A’s management is that the A’s fans did nothing wrong to cause the altercation. I don’t believe it. Francisco was not the only upset Ranger, though Doug Brocail and the other Texas relievers didn’t do anything stupid like Francisco did.

This is the same bullpen where an altercation broke out last playoff year between A’s fans and Red Sox players. The Rangers made several calls early in the game for more security, but the ballpark manager said he never got those requests. I should point out that the umpires, who don’t have anything to do with such requests, heard about them. The ballpark manager, David Rinetti, has repeatedly said that the fans did nothing wrong.

OK, if that’s true, what about this? In the paper today the husband of the lady hit by the chair said he was heckling the Ranger pitchers. He also said it was “an American tradition.” He said he and his wife bought tickets near the bullpen just “so we can get on them a little bit.” The lady who got hit said, “it’s part of going to a baseball game, I don’t think he did anything wrong.”(Here’s the link for those quotes: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1882359). Not surprisingly, they’re looking at suing the Rangers, Francisco, and probably the A’s.

This is not at all to excuse Francisco, who claims he was grabbed and assaulted by A’s fans before throwing the chair. There is no excuse for him or his actions.

Nonetheless, I am pissed even more at these ‘fans’. Francisco screwed up in a fit of anger. These fans calmly and coolly planned on spending probably $100 per game so that they would have the privilege of insulting other human beings. When those human beings finally had had enough and retaliated, these ‘fans’ are going to try and get rich.

Great, maybe I should start planning on being rude to waitresses. How about bank tellers. Random businesspeople. Hopefully one of them will break my nose and I can sue their company for millions.

No, there are no good guys in this. There are two jerks, David Rinetti, who doesn’t seem to care about the security of opposing ballplayers, and Rangers manager Buck Showalter, whose defense of his player was idiotic. There is the bad guy, Frank Francisco, and the worse guys, that would be Jennifer and Craig Bueno. Should they have had a chair thrown at them? Of course not. Should they have gotten tickets so they could insult other human beings who happen to play for a different team? I say no. I say, if you poke the bear, you accept that the bear might bite.