"He Flipped Us And Got What He Deserved": A Royal Mugging In Chicago

"He Flipped Us And Got What He Deserved"
A Royal Mugging in Chicago

by Jeff Kallman

Flipping the bird to the Ebbets Field boo birds got Casey Stengel a standing ovation in 1919. Flipping the bird to a pair of lithe, wired Comiskey Park birds (so they say was done), for whom booing might have been their least vile emissions, got Tom Gamboa a mugging Thursday night.

It probably helped Stengel that his was a very literal flip; it surely hurt Gamboa that his two assailants were probably too thick to appreciate it, if he had thought about trying it Casey's way.

Stengel with the Pittsburgh Pirates was getting it but good from the Brooklyn bellowers who had rooted for him in Dodger flannels just a season arlier. With a little help from old an old Dodger buddy, pitcher Leon Cadore, Casey started the next day's game with a little surprise under his cap for his erstwhile fans. Just in case.

He came up for his first at-bat of the day and the Flatbush flayers let him have it. Borne of an awkward courtliness knitted within his roughtumble puckishness, Stengel let his bat fall from his hands, faced the crowd, and bowed elegantly enough as he tipped his cap.

Out flew a sparrow that Cadore had caught and given to Stengel for the occasion. Ebbets Field rocked with screaming laughter.

Gamboa spent most of Thursday night's game on the first base coaching line for the Kansas City Royals. When not counseling the occasional Royals baserunner, he spent the game hearing an uninterrupted barrage of venomously obscene abuse from a group of shirtless, tattooed fellows.

Come the top of the ninth, the 54-year-old coach did or did not give them the usual flip of the bird. Gamboa says nay; the tattooed thugs say otherwise. What no one disputes is that Gamboa's attention was trained entirely between home plate and the pitcher's mound, watching Royals right fielder Michael Tucker bunt back to Chicago White Sox pitcher Mike Porzio for the inning's first out, Gamboa's hands on hips and eyes fixed firmly.

The World Trade Center attacks were less sneaky than two of the shirtless tattoo sewermouths hopping the rail, sprinting toward the coaching line, and blindsiding Gamboa. With the first base umpire and, more tellingly, White Sox first baseman Paul Konerko - in fact, just about the entire White Sox team - standing their positions and doing nothing.

The thugs had barely brought Gamboa down when they were swarmed themselves by the entire Royals roster, pouring out of their dugout, giving a deserved enough pummeling to what turned out a father-and-son thug team, 34-year-old William Ligue, Jr. and his 15-year-old son. The Royals actually got to their coach's rescue, loosened him from his assailants, and loosened a pocket knife from one of the pair's belt loops, faster than the guards and gendarmes who finally hustled the Ligues off the field and off to the local cage.

It was enough that Gamboa never saw his muggers coming, but you cannot help but hope he never noticed Konerko and the White Sox standing doing nothing as the attackers struck and beyond. Sportsmanship be damned; if you can't beat 'em (the Royals held on to win the game, 2-1), let 'em get beaten up.

Just what Chicago needs. Let the whole country think one of your teams lacks the common decency to keep a defenceless 54-year-old coach from getting beaten into mulch by a younger, wired, and wiry father-and-son thug team without an unfried brain in their heads.

If you think they were just your usual run of sewermouthed swine of the kind that periodically punctuates the normal pack of boo birds, be advised that one law enforcement source reported to the Associated Press that the elder Ligue telephoned a relative by cell phone, around the seventh inning, asking if she were watching the game. She wasn't; she couldn't find the channel.

"Well," Ligue replied, according to the law enforcement source, "just watch the news."

The Comiskey Park crowd was better than the White Sox deserved. They gave Gamboa a standing O as he was led off the field with cuts and a bruised cheek.

"It's like I was playing a football game," Gamboa would say of the attack later, "and I was the only player they forgot to issue equipment to."

Did Gamboa really flip the fans the bird? "The only thing that's really got me upset even more than the incident itself is the charge that there was something going on between us," said Gamboa, who made some media rounds Friday morning. "I have never in my professional career ever responded to fans. At no time, no matter how bad it got, have I ever made a hand gesture or verbally done anything to the fans."

The Ligue vermin offered no excuse for their assault other than that Gamboa "flipped us and got what he deserved." As if taking nine innings worth of such abuse as might have been deemed obscene in a porn film (various reports indicated those surrounding the Ligue party heard precisely such abuse) was supposed to be just part of the job. As if even an apparently mild-mannered, good-humoured fellow like Gamboa was just supposed to shut up and take it.

Those baseball fans are rare enough (thank God) who assume their ticket to the ballpark confers a licence to abuse eons beyond mere booing, razzing, or sarcastic catcalling. They ought to be grateful that more players or other field uniform personnel haven't fed them with knuckle sandwiches for their hunger.

But suppose a less mild-mannered man than Gamboa decided it was time enough to teach the Ligue swine a lesson in manners before their hop-sprint-mug. He would not get away with, "Well, they were givin' me the potty mouth inning in and inning out, and I gave 'em what they deserved."

Think I talk beyond my competence? Meet Cesar Cedeno. In 1973 he got himself into an off-the-field scrape that ended up with someone getting shot and Cedeno getting convicted for involuntary manslaughter. (I am not entirely sure of this, but memory instructs that Cedeno's gun was used in the shooting and it was not clear that Cedeno was the actual, but a law in the state where the crime occurred deemed one's ownership of the weapon involved was as good as the owner himself pulling the trigger.)

That fact didn't stop a few particularly merciless Astro fans from slamming Cedeno relentlessly, game in and game out, for at least a few weeks, including one sleazebucket firing Murderer! N-gg-r Murderer! as if repeating a tape loop...in 1981. Eight years after the incident in question.

Lesser men than Cedeno have snapped under that kind of continuing assault a lot sooner than Cedeno finally did. At last, during a September 1981 game the Astros were losing (3-2, to the Atlanta Braves), Cedeno charged into the stands to pound the living hell out of the mouth that bored into him without letup.

Cedeno was hit for a $5,000 fine but no suspension. The National League sometimes has the more enlightened view than the American League. If you think that's a stretch, then fast forward a decade and shake hands (if you dare) with Albert Belle.

Yes. That Albert Belle. Well, he wasn't even Albert yet; in 1991, he was still going by his childhood nickname, Joey, a diminutive of his actual middle name, Jojuan. Coming up with an outsize talent, a disconcerting but not yet intimidating insularity, and an alcohol problem from which he was already trying recovery, Belle was struggling enough with the recovery without a Cleveland Indian fan named Jeff Pillar getting hold of him.

Pillar slammed Belle incessantly with drinking taunt after drinking taunt, even with Belle's alcohol struggle public enough knowledge. Then Pillar hit Belle with, "Hey, Joey, keg party at my place after the game, c'mon over," and Belle had finally had as much as he could stand, firing a baseball full strength into Pillar's chest.

Just as most Comiskey Park fans cheered Gamboa when he got up from his assault and walked off the field Thursday night, a majority of Jacobs Field fans cheered Belle after he drilled Pillar. Then-American League president Bobby Brown suspended Belle for a week and ordered him to pay a week's salary to a charity of his choice.

Belle reverted to his first name after the incident and turned his back on just about everyone, except the pitcher he was about to face or the fences in front of which he played the outfield gamely if not virtuosically. Without once condoning the jerk he became (not to mention the relapsed drinker - he was arrested for DUI in his native Arizona last week), could you really blame Belle for thinking of fans from then on as one step removed from terrorists, after the Pillar incident and a punishment which really didn't fit the crime?

Speaking of crime, the Ligue louses are not exactly alien to criminal charges like the aggravated battery charge they face in the Gamboa attack. Police reporting indicated the elder Ligue's history includes charges for domestic battery.

Gamboa, for his part, is doing his best to make it no big deal. "It's 15 minutes of fame for a no-name guy," said Gamboa of himself, in the Friday morning wake of the attack. "It's like I'm today's Kato Kaelin. Ten years from now, somebody will point to me and say, 'That's the guy who was attacked'. Nobody likes to be remembered for that. I'd like to be appreciated for the job I do."

So did old-time umpire George Magerkurth, after a fashion. Big Mage was as legendary for his short fuse as for his huge enough (as in, 6'3") presence. He made his bones when he threw no less than New York Giants legend John McGraw out of a 1929 game. Magerkurth was going at it with (what a surprise) Brooklyn Dodger manager Leo Durocher in 1940 when he got blindsided by a hefty runt of a fan, knocking the surprised ump down and sitting over him beating him senseless.

Magerkurth seems to have had a heart as big as his temper was short, telling the judge he didn't want to see the man charged with anything. "Poor fellow just lost his head," the big ump told a judge. "I don't want to see him in jail. I've got a boy of my own."

The attacker turned out to be a professional pickpocket, among other small time criminal expertises. A few years later, he was hauled before the same judge on another petty crime charge. The judge - also a Dodger fan - remembered him from the Magerkurth incident and asked, at last, just what on earth made him attack Big Mage like that?

Oh, sure, he was P.O.ed at the Dodgers not winning the game and Big Mage making a couple of close calls against the Bums.

"But to tell you the truth, Judge," the little guy continued, "I had a partner working the stands. We was doing a little business."

Perverse as it might sound, that is more in the way of honour, somehow, than Gamboa's father-and-son muggers can claim.

Gamboa is handling this incident with more class than the White Sox deserve. Put the whole damn pack of that team in the Hall of Shame. (And, maybe, Paul Konerko should duck a few fastballs to his head awhile? And to think this was the guy who accused a few of his teammates of having no heart earlier in the season? Come on, Yellow Sox - it isn't like this game had the pennant on the line. Show some class. You should have at least done something to help Mr. Gamboa and roust the thugs who poleaxed him.)

I agree with you Blues...being a native of Chicago, and having lived there for 32 yrs, I must say, watching this attack just made me sick, and I kept wondering why it was, that only the Royals were pummeling those thugs...it just seemed like the whole White Sox team was just standing around doing nothing...how embarrassing...

Glad I have always been a Chicago Cubs fan...I would hope, that they would have had the decency and good common sense, to stop that attack...

I hope that those two worthless thugs, get smacked around in court...fine example of that jerk of father to show to his son...and when the son winds up in jail, a few years from now, that dad can be so proud of himself, of the worthless example he gave to his son...

On a side note Blues...did you get to see the film of Lou Pinella throwing a terrible fit at the Mariners game a few nights ago...he was so upset, I really thought they were going to wind up taking him to the hospital...when he ripped 1st base out of the ground and threw it, I lost it...boy was he mad..

Thanks for the ping. My daughter & son-in-law were watching the game, and saw it all unfold ... LIVE. We've been talking about it, since it happened. I've now seen it too. What a buch of poltroons , jerks, and subhumans !

The Cubs may not be a good ball tea, ; however, neither they, or their fans have done anything like this; that I know of.

The behavior , of the thugs, was bad enough ... that the Sox ignored what was happening, is just beyond the pale.

On a side note Blues...did you get to see the film of Lou Pinella throwing a terrible fit at the Mariners game a few nights ago...he was so upset, I really thought they were going to wind up taking him to the hospital...when he ripped 1st base out of the ground and threw it, I lost it...boy was he mad..

I saw the film. I was wondering when the old Sweet Lou was finally going to show up! The man had been too quiet most of the season. (A season without at least two Lou Piniella tirades per two months is...well, a season without Randy Johnson striking out the world.) We're talking serious fit-hits-the-shan stuff here...On the other hand, all things considered, maybe Sweet Lou should have thrown bases at his front office, one base for each total base lost thanks to the Mariners' brain trust (if that isn't an oxymoron) not shoring them up with one more good bat to help atone for the injuries that cost them a lot of offence in staggered spots this season.

On the other hand: What does it say about a fellow when Ichiro Suzuki could end up hitting .325 for the season and you call it a bad year?

But back to Chicago. I noticed (I pointed it out in my essay) that most White Sox fans were on Gamboa's side in the mugging. I tend more toward the Cubs, too, myself, but it's like I said in the original: the White Sox don't deserve the fans they do have. (Of course, all things considered, you have to consider the meathead who owns the team, too...)

Borne of an awkward courtliness knitted within his roughtumble puckishness, Stengel let his bat fall from his hands, faced the crowd, and bowed elegantly enough as he tipped his cap.

This was nice, I enjoyed that well-turned sentence.

After that, it got tiresome. A writer should not be more in love with his own words than with his audience.

Sweet Lou just seems to go in streaks...he sits in that dugout, looking so laid back, no matter what is going wrong, and them BAM, all of a sudden he jumps up and you just know what is coming...but this latest fit, was one for the books, they are still talking about it up here and probably will be for a while...

I think a lot of it was just frustration at the whole season this year...the Mariners have just had a tough time of it this year...my husband and son have gone to a few Mariners games this year, some games they lost, some they won...but at least they have the delightful Safeco Field, and that is something, even if the Mariners lose...but we did so hope for a year like last year...we just did not get it...

But you have got to love that Ichiro...a hell of a batter, a hell of a fielder, and hes just so cute on top of it all...

One of the radio guys this morning was having some mad fun with Piniella's base-throwing tantrum. He wondered aloud what would happen if a manager losing it with the umpire(s) decided to wing the base into the stands, and what the fan who caught the base might do. (Imagine - catching a base thrown by Lou Piniella and then getting him to autograph it after the game!)

I just pulled out my copy of Damned Yankees, Bill Madden and Moss Klein's splendid book about the earlier Steinbrennerian reign of error (the years before he finally got his thinking right on how to run a ball club). It reminded me of two favourite stories of Lou Piniella the manager:

1) Piniella and a couple of coaches and writers were knocking around a hotel lobby when they saw Phil Niekro, then with the Yankees, wander into the hotel. It was close to the team curfew. One of the writers needled Piniella about reminding Niekro about the curfew. "I can't tell Knucksie to go to bed," Piniella replied. "He's older than me."

2) Steinbrenner phoned the dugout in a snit over then-California Angels pitcher Don Sutton, going against Tommy John, doing, shall we say, things to his ball. "Don't you see what Sutton's doing out there?" Steinbrenner thundered. "George," Piniella answered, "if I get the umpires to check Sutton, don't you know that the Angels are going to check TJ? They'll both get thrown out. Whatever they're doing, TJ is doing it better than Sutton. So let's leave it alone for now." (The Yankees won the game.)

Best non-Yankee crack of that game: the scout who observed, "Tommy John against Don Sutton. If anyone can find one smooth ball from that game, he ought to send it to Cooperstown."

The White Sox players and the refs could see that the Royals players were on their way to kick these two scumbag's ass. They knew the Royals players could take care of it and so gave the Royals the pleasure of knocking the crap out of the two idiots.

You forget two small details: 1) The White Sox had a better sighting of the two thugs than the Royals' coach had. They saw the bastards first and could have - should have - stopped them from getting anywhere near him. Unless, of course, you think a 54-year-old coach whose days as a full-time athlete are well enough behind him is better able to protect himself from a blindside attack than a 20-something full-time athlete who sees the attack coming before the intended victim does.

2) Comiskey Park, after all, is the White Sox's house, and you don't let guests in your house get their arses kicked in.

If you are a guest in my home and some idiot is coming over my wall aiming for tearing your head and hide off, and I happen to see said idiot before you do, it is my responsibility to protect you as a guest in my home. If I failed that responsibility, you would hardly want to be a guest in my home again and no one would blame you, either.

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