Right or Wrong?
Down the right
field line, you're sitting as reigning AL Rookie of the Month, anxiously awaiting the yell from the bullpen coach for you
to warm up. Then a fan behind you starts getting in your head. You put expletives in your mind, but try to concentrate on
the seeds your chewing and the hot girl near the Oakland dugout. The fan gets louder, then he gets personal, going yo-mama
and racial on you. Next, your bullpen mates start opening their ears, and standing up and replying back to drunken old man.
Before you know it’s an all-out fracas and someone grabs your arm and twists your wrist. You break away pick up a chair
in anger and heave it into the stands in front of you. It bounces of a fat man, hits a woman in the head, causing lacerations
in her now broken nose.
All
of sudden your handcuffed and taking a mug shot in the Alameda County Jail, for aggravated assault, with a chair! That’s
the story of Ranger’s reliever Frank Francisco all of sudden as come into.
The
fans don’t seemed to mind when Carl Everett gets hit in the head with a cell phone, an occurrence that happens a couple
of times at Network Associates Coliseum. Fans don’t care when one of their own attacks a Royals first base coach. Fans
are humans, they have a right of free speech, and players are humans and are entitled to free speech. Now Frank Francisco,
25, playing for Texas on a work visa, has a chance to be deported to his native Dominican Republic, if convicted. He wouldn’t
be able to re-enter the United States of America, ever again. Banished.
In Arizona, Matt Bush can punch and get into an altercation at a bar, with a bouncer and walk
away with a mug shot, a night in jail and a fine of 1000 dollars, and about a 4-week suspension from rookie ball. Yet, Frank
Francisco throws a chair and injures someone, about the same thing, and they want him to serve up to 4 years in jail. The
judicial system makes no sense at all!
And two years William Ligue and his 15-year old son ambushed Royals’ first base coach Tom
Gamboa in Chicago, causing several injuries. But they got away with 5 months of probation for the son, and 30 months probation
for William. Probation, not jail time! And two years before that, on the North side of Chicago, a Cubs fan knocks the Dodgers’
Chad Kreuter’s hat off causing a brawl. 16 players and 3 coaches were suspended for their part in that melee, and even
though punches were thrown, no fines or arrests? Or when Phil Nevin snaps with a curse at Phillies fan with his young daughter.
He wants Nevin suspended for that, but he gets away with nothing. The fan complains about Nevin’s choice of words, but
I guarantee 75% of kids over 6, know all of them “words.” And in the first place what is the fan teaching his
daughter, with the heckling? That’s the 21st century for you.
Francisco should be fined a hefty amount of his salary, in the neighborhood of $300,000, receive
an 8 game suspension, and that be the end of that. Players are role models, but there humans not robots, except Barry Bonds,
and they make mistakes.
Fans have their right to protect themselves as humans and the players have the same right. In
both cases, the fan and Francisco, each went overboard and each should be punished. They say if you don’t have anything
nice to say don’t say it all and talk out all problems, violence is not need, unfortunately, absolutely no one that
has ever lived on Earth, as abided by this notion all the time, not even Gandhi.
Baseball will always have the element of the fan, but if they want a solution create cheering
sections, visitors on 3rd base line, home fans on 1st baseline and outfield. Leave it to that.
Frank Francisco was not in check and neither was the fan, but that’s life, it’s the
world understand the game the baseball and all the elements. And meanwhile, put yourselves in Francisco’s situation,
what would YOU have done?
Francisco was suspended for the remainder of the season and fined, with a case pending.
