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

The Polo Grounds: A Calm Review of Baseball ^ | 20 September 2002 | Jeff Kallman

[barker]

but you cannot help but hope he never noticed Konerko and the White Sox standing doing nothing as the attackers struck and beyond.

The writer got this part wrong. It was Willie Harris who was covering first. The umpire had the best view and did nothing. Part of his job is to maintain order on the field and he did nothing. He had time to react and didn't.

From what I've read, White Sox fans are just as disgusted by this incident as anyone. These two idiots gave their town and team a blackeye. Last night at the Royals game there was extra security both in the stands and on the field. Gamboa got a standing O when he took the field. A group of 7 or 8 young men brought a great sign. It said "Gamboa, we've got your back". Noticed several Cleveland players and the 1st base umpire shaking Gamboas hand.

Lived in the western suberbs (Lombard, Villa Park) of Chicago for 11 years. Used to follow the Cubs.

[Illbay]

1. These people were doubtless on drugs--you know, the same drugs that the Libertines here want to tell you are a personal choice and affect no one else (they are liars, but most people know that).

2. Our society continues to degenerate into barbarity. True, not all are barbarians, but enough to make a difference. Add to that the INdifference such as displayed by the White Sox players, or the "I don't want to get involved" types that regularly allow muggings in densely populated urban areas, and you have the makings of a breed of lawlessness that far outstrips the "Wild" West of a century and a quarter ago.

[BluesDuke]

I have nothing further to say to you. You have accused me of saying things I did not say, and you have attributed to me words or sentiments which I clearly enough attributed to others. At worst, I could be said to accuse the White Sox of temporary indifference, which are not the same thing as cowardice. I have not once accused them of cowardice, and I would not do so, because I do not think cowardice was involved in this disgrace. I made it a specific point of saying to you earlier that I have heard others make the charge. I thought at the time I heard them (for your information, I made it a point of listening to the sports radio people Friday morning; I had switched to a particular political talk show in my area in the afternoon and that host actually came right out and used the C word, too. And I still think now that they were, if you'll pardon the expression, off base. Inaction - or perhaps the better term is momentary indifference, who knows - is not equivalent to cowardice in all situations.

[BluesDuke]

The earlier posters on this thread and the author were willing to condemn a whole city for something that they didn't even consider fully.

Show me where I condemned an entire city. Or, even an entire ballpark crowd. Otherwise, put a sock in it.

[BluesDuke]

I still can't figure out which of the photos you posted up has gotten the widest circulation! ;)

[BluesDuke]

Gamboa is saying he has no hard feelings at all that the ump and Chicago first baseman (especially those two because they were right there) did nothing because "we were all just stunned."

Gamboa is a class act all the way. That's better than the White Sox - and the ump - deserved in this instance. I have a suspicion we might not know what really went through the White Sox' head for a long time on this one. But at minimum the first baseman and ump should have been on those two's tails immediately. I'd like to think most of us on this thread (myself included), had we been in their position, would have been.

[BluesDuke]

The writer got this part wrong. It was Willie Harris who was covering first.

Didn't he cover first on the bunt play which happened moments before the thugs jumped the coach? On the video I saw of the incident, it seemed to me Konerko was returning and closer to first base than Harris (I couldn't tell his number or his name in this clip) would have been. And, you're quite right - the umpire did have precisely the responsibility you attribute. All the umpires do, of course, but this attack happened practically on his front stoop, so to say.

[breakem]

re 42. I know you see this as a chance to rant about others views to legalize drugs, but at the ballpark people are more liklely to be un der the influence of beer, especially late in the game.

[BluesDuke]

Let's assume the two thugs were wired on something. (Between you and me, I'd bet only too many people are thinking precisely that - me, I'll wait for a toxicology report, if any is being done.) In a sense, it wouldn't matter. Why? Because if you commit a crime it doesn't (it shouldn't) matter whether you had consumed cocaine, Coca-Cola, cold cuts, or chicken cutlets just prior to committing the crime. Jumping and beating up an older man from behind is still assault and battery no matter what they'd consumed before they jumped him. And, from the look and sound of these two birds, they didn't impress me at first as being guys who needed to get high before getting obnoxious and even violent.

Whether we are as far gone into barbarism as you fear is not something I would be prepared to say empirically, though I suspect we are still not even close (if I'm right about this, thank God for it and no praise to me for it). I sometimes think it's not so much we are more barbaric as it is the barbaric among us, whom we will never eradicate entirely, simply choose to practise their barbarism far more spectacularly than those of our earlier generations. And because of the spectacle, it becomes too easy to think we're halfway gone and a short distance to go completely beyond the edges.

But perhaps if we started getting back to punishing the damn crime, period-dot-period, without bothering about who ate, drank, smoked, injected, inhaled what before they did the crime, we just might be a lot better off. I cannot easily accept that one murder is less evil than the other murder based upon whom between the two consumed certain somethings. If anything, I could just about believe that a murder committed stone cold sober and in completely sound mind - God only knows how many such murders have been committed - might well strike as far more evil.

[#3Fan]

I have nothing further to say to you. You have accused me of saying things I did not say, and you have attributed to me words or sentiments which I clearly enough attributed to others.

Look at this thread. The record is clear.

At worst, I could be said to accuse the White Sox of temporary indifference, which are not the same thing as cowardice. I have not once accused them of cowardice, and I would not do so, because I do not think cowardice was involved in this disgrace. I made it a specific point of saying to you earlier that I have heard others make the charge. I thought at the time I heard them (for your information, I made it a point of listening to the sports radio people Friday morning; I had switched to a particular political talk show in my area in the afternoon and that host actually came right out and used the C word, too. And I still think now that they were, if you'll pardon the expression, off base. Inaction - or perhaps the better term is momentary indifference, who knows - is not equivalent to cowardice in all situations.

If you fingerpointers would consider the situation fully, there would be no need to call the players or the city of Chicago any names over this incident. You attacked the entire city of Chicago. It's on this thread.

[#3Fan]

Show me where I condemned an entire city. Or, even an entire ballpark crowd. Otherwise, put a sock in it.

Post #2, you fool. You think I can't paste it?

#2: *Chicago Hall of Shame bump*

[BluesDuke]

Something else we should probably thank God for: that at least concerning baseball games, fans like this pair of beauties are the rare enough exceptions, rather than the rule. We could all probably think of those sports where fans like this are practically an every-game occurrence.

I have still never forgotten maybe the most disgraceful thing I have ever seen of fan behaviour involving any major sporting event or team sport: in an NHL playoff game during the 1980s, the New York Islanders playing the New York Rangers in Madison Square Garden. (This was during the Islanders' stupefying early 1980s streak of four straight Stanley Cups.) An Islander (his name escapes my memory for the moment) got badly enough injured on a bone-crunching bodycheck that he was taken off the ice and to the hospital. Well, now. As medical technicians were loading the injured player aboard the ambulance, a pack of Ranger fans outside the Garden actually tried tipping the ambulance over. Almost two decades later, that grotesquery still jars. (I still remember the Rangers themselves, almost to a man, condemning those "fans" after they learned of the incident - and you're talking about one of the most grinding rivalries in the NHL.) Not even in the worst of an NFL or a soccer crowd have I known of anything like that to happen.

Personally (and I said this in my original article) I think that majority crowd at Comiskey Park should get a standing O for the way they gave Mr. Gamboa the standing O as he was brought to his feet and escorted for help.

[BluesDuke]

Oh, please. "Chicago Hall of Shame" doesn't refer to the whole damn city, it refers a hypothetical institution within the city (a city I happen to like - I have been there a few times, though when I think about baseball I'm more likely to go to a Cubs game because I'm so fond of Wrigley Field), even if it might be only in the city's mind. Which is precisely where I'm sure this incident has been enshrined. And appropriately so.

[#3Fan]

Oh, please. "Chicago Hall of Shame" doesn't refer to the whole damn city, it refers a hypothetical institution within the city (a city I happen to like - I have been there a few times, though when I think about baseball I'm more likely to go to a Cubs game because I'm so fond of Wrigley Field), even if it might be only in the city's mind. Which is precisely where I'm sure this incident has been enshrined. And appropriately so.

I've never heard of it. It's fans like you that always assume the worst of players that makes sports events hard to watch or discuss. There are bad apples in sports but to just shoot off your mouth like you did without knowing the facts, and not even knowing for sure who the first baseman was or what he saw, or even what he said about it is totally unfair, gossip mongering, and false accusatory. Have you seen another angle of it that may show the Royals on the way before the ump or the player even saw the situation?

[BluesDuke]

The Hall of Shame bit is actually more common an analogic device than you might think. (Surely you have heard people in debate punctuate an argument against someone's thought, word, act, with, "Put 'im in the Hall of Shame"? Well, here's where I would say, "Put 'em in the Chicago Hall of Shame." That sort of thing.)

But I happen to know a) that Paul Konerko is the White Sox first baseman, b) that second baseman Willie Harris was covering first on a bunt play that occurred just prior to the jerkwater twins jumping the rail and blindsiding the Royals' coach (in fairness, I'd be willing to bet you that as time passes a lot of people will forget the play which occured just prior to the jerkwater twins' entry onto the field - just like people forget, for example, that the 1926 World Series ended not with Grover Cleveland Alexander coming in hung over from the St. Louis bullpen to strike out Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded, but with Babe Ruth getting caught stealing at second with Bob Meusel at bat and Lou Gehrig on deck), c) that Konerko returned to first after the play and just before the rail jumpers jumped, ran and struck, was still closer than anyone else short of the first base umpire to the attack.

Incidentally, when I criticised those radio hosts who alluded to whatever the second baseman did or did not say about the incident, I thought I made it clear enough that they were leveling a charge that could not be proven, but that I was leveling no such charge. (I alluded to having tried to find any such quote from the second baseman in the Chicago or the Kansas City press, the media groups most likely to have picked up on such a comment - I mean, this wasn't exactly a pennant-significant game, and I don't think ESPN would have had too many reporters covering the game at the ballpark in such a case. And I thought I also said that, having found no such quote from that second baseman, he would owe an apology if he said it but he would be owed an apology if he did not say it. That isn't the same thing as me accusing him of saying it. I'll admit that if he did say it I would have been dismayed about it, but without a confirmation that he said any such thing, I wasn't going to jump him the way the radio hosts I heard alluding to it jumped him.)

All that said, I almost can't wait to know what the jerkwater twins who started the whole business say about it in court, if they get there. (With the courts and the lawyers these days, who knows?) I'd almost pay money to sit in court hearing them say what they told the press as they were being carted off to the can: "He flipped us and got what he deserved."

[BluesDuke]

By the way, one more regarding the Hall of Shame bit: there was a charmingly funny series of books written by Bruce Nash and Allan Zullo called The Baseball Hall of Shame - stories of the game's classic foulups, bleeps, blunders, and even batteries. The twosome also wrote a hugely funny book called The Baseball Hall of Shame's Warped Record Book. Perfect reading on a dreary morning such as exists outside my window in Huntington Beach this morning. Now, I don't think their title indicated baseball itself is a Hall of Shame. Neither, I think, would you. :)

[NYCVirago]

Excellent column -- one of your best. And I've never liked Albert Belle, but at least now I have a better understanding of why he was so hostile to the fans.

[BluesDuke]

Found this in this morning's Chicago Tribune...

Commissioner Bud Selig has seen many shocking things around ballparks, but rates the attack on Kansas City first base coach Tom Gamboa "near the top" of that list.

"I was stunned," Selig said. "This was just one of those horrifying things you see and you're just overwhelmed that it happened."

Selig's first call Friday morning went to Major League Baseball's executive vice president Sandy Alderson, who was ordered to join White Sox officials in an investigation of the incident. But Selig is not expecting it to turn up any major flaws in stadium procedures at Comiskey Park.

I'm glad our alleged commissioner at least had something to say about it. (Confession: I am not even close to being one of Bud Selig's fans...)

[NYCVirago]

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.

What I also want to know is where the heck were the White Sox's security. It seems like there are always plenty of guards around to prevent fans from sitting in vacated box seats during the later innings, yet here not one but two idiots jump onto the field and nobody stops them!

[xp38]

I used to workout at the Skydome fitness club when the Skydome opened. Occasionally players would drop by to work out. Nolan Ryan of course was there whenever he was in town. Albert Belle was there one day and had taken a spot on a bench I was using to lift weights. I asked him to move. He was nice and did so.