Someone's going to get paralyzed or worse, and by worse I guess that means killed. And then this whole Barry Bonds "nightmare" thing will take on a whole new feel. A nightmarish feel, come to think of it.
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| Matt Murphy was twice lucky; he caught Bonds' 756th -- and he lived to tell about it. (Getty Images) |
And then what? What becomes of Barry Bonds' home run derby then? What becomes of Alex Rodriguez's pursuit of 600, and then 700, and ultimately his pursuit of Bonds? What becomes of baseball?
Don't tell me this can't happen. Watch the video clips of No. 755 at Petco Park in San Diego and No. 756 at AT&T at San Francisco. Scary stuff, especially No. 756. While Bonds is circling the bases and most of the crowd is going nuts, about 20 people in center field have literally lost their minds. It looks like a school of piranha attacking a single goldfish. While Bonds touches home plate and starts hugging people, cops arrive in the outfield and start pulling people off the pile.
At the bottom of that scrum was a 22-year-old New Yorker wearing a Mets jersey, Matt Murphy, who says he grabbed No. 756, dove under a bleacher seat and curled into a fetal position. That strategy allowed him to protect the ball and his vital organs. The San Francisco Police Department, Murphy told the New York Daily News, "saved my life."
If this goes on long enough -- if it's allowed to go on long enough -- someone might not be as lucky as Murphy, who emerged from the scrum with his Mets jersey torn to shreds and his scalp bleeding. The most common picture of Murphy shows him being escorted to safety with a look of wonderment on his face and a piece of cloth pressed to his head wound.
This is what we do. We take a nice moment and we ruin it. Once upon a time it was charming when a college football crowd stormed the field after a big win, climbed the goalposts and pulled those suckers down. After unranked North Carolina State beat No. 2 Florida State in 1998, red-clad Wolfpack fans looked like ants at a picnic, making off with the prize banana. It was great.
But in 2000, after Georgia beat Tennessee, a Dawgs fan was hospitalized with major head trauma after being trampled by fans rushing the goalposts. In 2001, a Ball State student was struck by a falling goalpost, leaving him paralyzed below the waist. He sued the school, and soon colleges were replacing their goalposts with an erector-set model that can be dismantled by security officials within seconds of the game's end.
Sports fans are becoming more and more brazen, even unhinged. In Chicago in 2002, Royals first-base coach Tom Gamboa was beaten so badly by father-and-son thugs that he lost some of the hearing in his right ear. In Detroit in 2004, a dumbass drunk Pistons fan threw a beverage cup at Ron Artest, triggering an ugly melee.
Sports weren't always this way, not even when historic baseballs were flying into the seats. When Hank Aaron hit his 755th and final career home run at Milwaukee in 1976, it went into a nearly empty section of bleachers in left, where it was retrieved by the Brewers ground crew. Back then it was enough for fans to watch history. Now they want to sell someone else's history. A piece of Pete Rose's chewed gum from the 1970s recently went for more than $50 on eBay. Paris Hilton's used toothbrush brought $305.
The ball that became Barry Bonds' 756th home run? That'll fetch six figures. So will the ball that becomes the last home run he ever hits. Whatever that number is -- 760? 790? -- it'll be the new standard for Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Howard and every other slugger to shoot for. In the meantime, Bonds' final homer will be worth a small fortune.
Fans in San Francisco have already figured that out. Bonds hit No. 758 on Friday into the standing-room-only area in right field, and video shows armed police officers wading into the humanity and pulling people off the guy who caught the ball. Everyone survived without injury. Not everyone will. Not every time. Not if this is allowed to continue.
It'll take something crazy, like two kayakers diving into the water for a ball in McCovey Cove and only one of them coming up for air. Or like a fan in Atlanta or Florida, where the Giants travel this week, getting stampeded into surgery by the hysteria in the bleachers. But it'll happen somewhere. That's life. Good things become great, and then great becomes garbage.
And then comes the change. In football, goalposts are now slathered in grease or taken down entirely before the crowd can get to them. In the NBA, fans are now facing beer restrictions. And in baseball? Who knows? Maybe teams will eventually have to ring nets around the outfield so historic home runs cannot reach the seats.
That would be ugly, and it would be sad -- but it would beat the alternative: those seats being empty because they are tickets the home team cannot afford to sell.
