Home Run Derby

We here at Home Run Derby owe most of our recent visitors to a Baseball Heckler (and since we’re not above beating a dead horse into the ground) - we decided to look around the Majors for some other examples of heckling – above and beyond Homemade Signs and Bronx Cheers and the like.  

Let’s find some fans giving the business to some Baseball Millionaires.  We started in the best place to look – which also happens to be the easiest. Good old YouTube. In ascending order …

Let’s start North of the border. 

Here, some Toronto Blue Jays fans are shouting an old (but dreadfully unimaginative) standby at Minnesota Twins outfielder Jason Kubel … I wonder if this kind of stuff will get into a player’s head?

Toronto fans get points for the group effort, but that’s about it.  Per our evidence, Blue Jay fans heckle like the Jays have played baseball this season.  They Suck.

Let’s see if a Minnesota Twins fan heckling Boston Red Sox outfielder Wily Mo Pena earlier this season can show them how it’s done …

Maybe he’ll ask where the missing L is from “Wily”.  Maybe Not.

That’s a little better, but something’s missing … oh I know … some crowd support would be nice.  The other fans aren’t inspired by the heckler.

Let’s go to Wrigley Field where Left Field can be a dangerous place for an Outfielder’s ego. 

The Cubbies’ Bleacher Bums are directing their pent-up frustrations towards Milwaukee Brewers’ OF Kevin Mench.  Surprisingly, they’re not shouting anything about Mench’s gigantic melon …

Okay – that’s more like it – a definite ringleader with a catchy chant and a throng of followers drunk on the Blue Kool-Aid – or something else.  Keep it up and you might get a ball.  Or not.

So far we’ve seen fans heckling players while they’re in the field. And pretty far away from the player.

What if you could get up close, say like then-Rockies’ backup catcher Todd Greene in the bullpen? And had no intention of getting anything in return except perhaps an invitation to brawl in the parking lot after the game? 

Imaginative and to the point – and it doesn’t get old.  And Greene made the mistake of turning to look and not saying anything. 

But heckling the Bullpen catcher?  Isn’t that like picking on the kid that got dropped off at school via the short bus?  It’s so … so … Philly.  And I love it.

There you have it … the four classes of heckling.  There’s probably a correlating four classes of drunk baseball fans too.