Once Cleveland Indians OF Milton Bradley was announced in Fenway last year, I got up and yelled, ‘Chutes and Ladders!!!
The Yankees were in town and the Seattle fans hate the Yankees. I am no different. Juan Acevedo was out shagging fly balls and I told him that the Tigers called and they said they were glad they got rid of him. I also asked him why his ERA was 9.00 and he threw his gum at me.
Back in 1986 I went to two world series games thanks to my good friend Mark Santoes, (son of sports announcer Gill Santoes). We sat out in right field and I brought in a bottle of rum to mix with the cokes I bought. Half way through the game I was feeling pretty good and thought that I would try to get Darryl Strawberry’s attention. I began by yelling, ‘hey Darryl!’. Then I just yelled his name. I started turning it into a chant. The next thing I know, a couple guys around me joined in. Pretty soon the whole right field was chanting, ‘Darryl, Darryl’. Yes, I am the one that started the biggest chant of all time and I have a witness.
Back during the 1998 home run craze, I went to a rainy Monday afternoon game at Three River’s Stadium between the Pirates and Cardinals. We saw Mark McGwire was not in the line-up, John Mabry was playing at 1st base. We saw Mabry out in right field during batting practice, and we heckled him terribly. He got humungous boos from all 30,000 people who showed up to see McGwire on this Monday afternoon. Finally me and my buddies started a chant during a rain delay. ‘Rain, Rain come and stay Mark McGwire won’t hit today’ and we chanted it all through the rain delay, and it was funny at the time because we were drunk.
I was at spring training in fort myers, florida watchin the redsox and the cardinals. the cardinals LF was JD Drew. some guy in front of me yelled ‘hey JD! you better back up, lou’s been liftin!’ as lou merloni came to the plate. sure enough on the first pitch, lou went deep and if drew was playin deeper, he would’ve been able to scale the wall like he almost did.
About July 2001, Phila vs Atlanta. Being a part time worker and high school student, my friends and I couldn’t afford high priced seats so we bought nose bleeds. As the game progressed, it was obvious the Braves we’re going to win and the Vet started to empty. We moved all the way down to behind home plate. I believe it was the top of the ninth and Andruw Jones was on deck. Having a couple beers in us, we started to make fun of his name. Then it progressed to the bar code tattoo on his neck. We got the whole section asking him how much he was worth. He stared at us the entire way from homeplate to the box and then proceeded to hit a home run and tip his cap to us.
Me and my brother were recently at game 1 of the NLDS between, the cards and dbacks….anyways the cards romped us 12-2 so during the bottom of the 8th we moved down to front row. Anyways this drunk guy is giving it to Eli Marrero in right field, cussing at him, talking about his family and everything…so Eli turns around looks at him for a few and blows him a kiss, and we laughed. needless to say Marrero is one of our new favorite players.
My son was on the local high school basketball team. This is rural high school. During a timeout someone lost a quarter and it rolled onto the court. The ref being the nice guy went to pick it up. At that precise moment I yelled: ‘Hey ref, keep it and buy your self a rule book!’ The crowd loved it, he didn’t.
In a spring training game when the Angels used to play in Palm Springs. Rickey Henderson was in a contract dispute and the A’s were playing the Angels in a spring game. A foul ball trickled near Henderson during a quiet moment of the game, I yelled at him as he bent over to pick it up: ‘Don’t pick it up Rickey, they don’t pay you enough!’ He then tossed the ball to the umpire, turned to face the crowd and flipped us all off. Rickey is a classless bore who will get in the HoF through talent alone, not on his slacker, team-forsaking, money grubbing, egotistical personality disorder.
My friend and I went to the Yankee/Mariners game at the beginning of the 2002 season. As you might know, Jason Giambi was playing first base, and struggling mightily at the time. The Chief (Freddy Garcia) was dominating, and strikes out Giambi for the third time. One guy in the crowd yells to Giambi: ‘You couldn’t hit your weight, Giambi!’ But the kicker was the guy sitting a few rows in front of him, who said: ‘Hey, that’s no fair! No one has hit .400 since Ted Williams!’workingtitle.cjb.net
This is actually an heckle directed at one guy who turned out to be a great guy, so we decided to insult/heckle someone else. Let me explain. We were at Olympic stadium to watch the expos. The Phillies I believe were in town and their first base coach was Dave Cash. An old Expos overall first pick. So anyways Cash was a easy target because of the ‘I’m ready to steal second’ stance he took as first base coach. So me and my friend we’re about 6-7 rows up from the field just a bit off first base, so we got Cash staring at us all game long. So by the third inning of us yelling at Cash, he gets a foul ground out and flips the ball to a kid in the first row. That automatically protect him from any heckling. So the kid is happy, we’re drunk and everybody is falling asleep at the big O. That same kid at one point drops his hat on the field between innings. There is security on the first and third base line between innings. The security guy closest to were the kid’s ! cap falls down ignores the kid and won’t give him his cap back. Then Good ol Cash is going to his post and picks up the cap and gives it to the kid. WOW! class. This is the 3rd inning. Me and my friend start firing away at the security guy who didn’t pick up the hat, he is a bit overweight so we rip into him. ‘ hey Backstop! you stink’ ‘hey Chief Wiggum’ ‘ how are the Hot-Dogs’ ‘ how bout some exercise’ etc… all fat jokes. The 2 guys next to us get in the act and soon we’re ordering 2 beers per inning(one per side) and we’re heckling the security guy. So at the end of the game. In the Phillies top of the order. Cash comes out to his post and tips his hat at us! So ‘backstop guy’ gets all pissed and starts giving us a crazy look. So the game ends and as we stumble out with our new found friends, there is about 15 security guards looking for us. So we dashed real fast outta there and laughed all the way home. Those were good times.
In 1997, my younger brother Nate and I went to a game at Candlestick Park to watch the Giants play the Dodgers. Our seats were way down the line by the Giants’ bullpen, but the key was that they were only two rows back. At that time, Rod Beck had been the closer for the Giants for awhile – he was decent (I think he had over 30 saves during that season), but my brother and I never really bought into his act. Late in the game, he began to warm up in case he was asked to protect the Giants’ lead. We were laughing at Beck because he had a funny body-type – his legs looked like they belonged on a chubby, squat lady. And, of course, his trademark was his beard. All of a sudden and totally out of nowhere, my brother launches a heckle: ‘HEY BECK, YOU LOOK LIKE A BEARDED LADY!’ Everyone around us was a little surprised, because we had been cheering for the Giants all game and now we were heckling Beck with no warning. What made it even better was that he could have heard us if we whispered, so we were in his head instantly. I lobbed in the old faithful, ‘THROW A TENT OVER THAT CIRCUS, BECK!’ We were a few beers in, so we kept heckling him, launching one after another, some funny, some not. We ended up getting escorted out by security after Beck complained to his coach, proving once and for all that he was, in fact, a bearded lady.
Back when Albert Belle played AAA ball for Colorado Springs they played a series in Las Vegas where my dad had season tickets on the front row next to the visitor (1B) dugout. When Belle (he went by Joey then) came to bat my dad yelled something about him striking out, which he did. When he threw down his bat and helmet my dad scolded him. In his next at bat my dad yelled that he would strike out again, which he did. He threw the bat and helmet towards the dugout and my dad said ‘Temper, temper Joey.’ The next time he was in the on-deck circle he pointed the bat at my dad and said ‘Don’t say a thing old man.’ He hit a weak comebacker to the pitcher and pointed again at my dad. His fourth time up my dad held out his hand with a Hershey’s kiss and said ‘Joey, let’s kiss and make up.’ Belle yelled, ‘Shut up old man.’ He grounded out again at that at bat. A few weeks later when he was called up to Cleveland, Belle got upset at a heckling fan and threw a ball from the ! outfield hitting the heckler in the chest.
A’s/Angels game in the summer of 1988 in Anaheim. Angels would lose 6-4, giving up three unearned runs on two errors from 2B Johnny Ray. During the seventh inning stretch, the entire section I was in got to their feet, and as loudly (and poorly) as we could, sang ‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame’ – except we changed the end of it to ‘For it’s one, two, three errors for Ray at the old ballgame!’
In 1989, a player named Carreon was batting against the Columbus Clippers, and I shouted ‘Carreon, you’re going to be carried OFF!’ (meaning he would be figuratively incapacitated and need to be helped off of the field, not carried off as a hero).
Basketball: The game was about to start. My partner (the Umpire) stood in front of the timekeepers table with his back to the crowd. As is the custom I stood at the center line across the court facing the crowd. After the singing of the National Anthem there was a brief quiet interlude. A loud voice in the top row yelled. ‘Hey Ref your fly is unzipped’
We were playing in a tournament in Hoagland, Indiana. I started heckling the umpire. I told him to open his one good eye. It turns out a few years back he was run over by a car and really had lost a majority of his eyesight in one eye. He had family members running the tournament and they came running into our dugout trying to start a fight. I guess they thought we knew he had only 1 good eye. After everything calmed down, I asked them why they let a one-eyed man umpire a game, and then the real fight broke out. Needless to say we didn’t get anymore calls that tourney and we had to leave town a day early.
Soccer: It was worth the price of admission to go to the old Dalymount Park in Dublin just to hear the hecklers. My favourite memory is when a ball was crossed in from the wing and the center forward who was bald went up to head it but missed. The cry came from the stands ‘Hey Charlie, chalk your cue’
At a late May 2002 White Sox game, there were about 6 or 7 guys in the upper deck, wearing mortar boards and robes, and each was holding a piece of cardboard and when they held up the signs it read: WE DITCHED GRADUATION TO BE AT THIS GAME
At White Sox games in Comiskey Park, when Magglio Ordonez comes up to bat, everyone chants: O-E-O, Magglio! O-E-O, Magglio! For Jose Valentin, it’s: Jose….Jose Jose Jose…Jose….Jose (just like the soccer commercials where they sing OLE)
At a Mets vs White Sox game at Comiskey Park, a guy yelled at Mike Piazza, who was batting, ‘Hey Piazza, chicks dig Alf, how come they don’t dig YOU?!’ Everyone who heard it laughed and clapped.
I was at an A’s/Padres spring training game in Yuma when Canseco and McGwire still played for the A’s and Jose had just had an incident in which he had run his wife off the road. I asked him during warm-ups where his wife was or if he had at least gotten her some help after doing what he did. He proceeded to come up to the front of the dugout and tell me he would rip my head if I said one more thing and then said he eats guys like me for lunch. I had it all on tape and this was all preceded by a story from a woman next to me who was staying at the A’s hotel and had a son also. He asked Jose for an autograph in the lobby and was told to wait outside like everyone else. He also told a kid at the game that day that he would give an autograph for five dollars. This was after a sports show in which he was portrayed as a caring individual and helping all kinds of children!
At Yankees/Mets Game, June 15. Mets fan to Ron Coomer: ‘Hey Coomer, get a salad.’
I was watching a high school playoff game (Go Cougars!) and an opposing batter struck out and threw his bat at the dugout, so I yelled ‘THERE’S NO CRYING IN BASEBALL!!’ Everyone on our side laughed and he got pissed and stared me down the rest of the game… It was great!
When the diminutive John Cangelosi was batting for the Marlins, a guy yelled, ‘come on, Cangie, do it for the circus people’.
am a student at the University of Houston and me and my 4 friends got the attention of Conference USA (the big boys) because we would stand along the fenceline 3 yards from the ear of people in the bullpen and spend 10 minutes heckling them. Many times we have had a direct effect on the game, so the Conference sent a memo to park security to make us sit in the bleachers instead of the lawn. That’s when you know you’ve done your job as a fan.
During the 96 World Series, the Bleacher Creatures and RF Box Seat ticket holders were in the middle of their usual ‘Box-Seats Suck’ ‘Bleachers Suck’ Chants…when all of the sudden a fat policeman looks at the groups doing it in disgust. In unison the chant changed to ‘Dunkin Donuts’ all fans pointed at the cop.
At Texas A&M when the visiting coach goes out to talk to the pitcher, everyone yells to the coach to, ‘pinch his butt, pinch his butt…’ Then normally the coach will give him a slap on the behind before he heads to the dug out, and everyone yells, ‘ perverted old man,etc.’
During a high school game, I commented from the stands behind home plate that ‘If that was a strike, I’m the Pope!’ The umpire replied, without turning around, but loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘John Paul or Pius?’
When my friends and I were at a Minnesota Twins game, sitting in the second row near first base. My friend made a sign for Doug Mientkiewicz that said ‘HEY DOUG, WANNA PIECE (OF GUM)’ Doug saw the sign and smiled at us. We even got on the big screen with our sign.
EL PUKE!!!(when el duque was on the mound against the red sox 2002)
A few years ago when Will Clark was traded to the Rangers he was here in Kansas City. My buddy and I were sitting no more than 10 feet from the warm up circle, so I started in on him a little. He was 0 for 3 against Appier that night, and they just pulled APE, so I yelled, ‘Hey Will, welcome to the American League, Appier’s not in, you might get a hit now!’ He went ballistic, came right over to the edge and called me some real choice words. In his at bat he got a single, then ran from 1st all the way home on the next hit, when he touched home he was jawing at me some more and pointing, I just turned around and started waving at some ‘Friends’ sitting farther back. My buddy said he was still upset. After the game we waited to get autographs, so ducked between two kids so he wouldn’t recognize, but my buddy swears he saw me, and wouldn’t sign anyone’s stuff.
Blair Riffel
Kansas City
At Oregon State baseball we have one consistent heckler than everyone recognizes. All-time greatest line I ever heard from his mouth, after a particularly bad called strike: ‘Hey ump, you’d better go back to tee ball. You’re not ready for moving pitches yet!’