The anti-Pence campaign was an ironic kind of meta-heckling it mocked the very idea of vilifying a stranger on the other team.
The guys at Citi Field, however, were up to something different. In a 2007 Yankees-Red Sox series, hundreds of Boston fans wore the same blonde mask in the stands at Fenway Park, an allusion to Alex Rodriguez’s rumored off-field activities. There have been creative attempts at mass heckling in ballparks before. In the stands, the best we can do is to yell “You suck!” until enough disapproving looks, or burly security employees, make us stop. Ballplayers rarely shout obscenities at each other they’ve got baseball to keep them busy. Mostly, heckling is just one example of the pathetic fallacy of fandom, that those of us in the seats are part of the action, essential to our team’s success-that we matter.
Of course, if players were so fragile as to be defanged by shouted taunts, then they’d likely have been culled from the sports herd long before making the pros. Through the years, African-American baseball players, from Jackie Robinson to Hank Aaron to Carl Crawford, have been subjected to racist jeers from the stands, with bigots often talking tough while relying on the relative anonymity of the crowd. Later in the game, Phillips tossed the guy a baseball, on which he had inscribed a personal message: “Dear Drunk Guy, thank you 4 all the love & support!! Now take this ball and shut the phuck up!!” Not all sports heckling is so innocuous, of course. Earlier this season, during a rain delay in Pittsburgh, a loudmouthed fan passed the time by jeering the Cincinnati Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips. Mostly the insults are yelled, often drunkenly, and they are often ignored. But other players get it, too, in the bullpen and along the foul lines. Outfielders, solitary in that swathe of grass (and closer to the cheap seats), often bear the brunt of fan abuse. No one said he couldn’t play.īaseball is a good sport for hecklers, offering plenty of quiet moments that become opportunities for mouthing off to a captive audience. Pence was untroubled, with six hits and two home runs in the series. Mets fans had spread a bit of humor to the sports world with their deadpan jabs, but they still couldn’t catch a break: the Giants took three games out of four. Copycats noted that Pence “hates bacon” and “prefers baths.” Meanwhile, away from Citi Field, the hashtag #HunterPenceSigns allowed users to provide their own critiques of Hunter Pence’s various innocent foibles on Twitter.
#HUNTR PENCE TV#
The guys were back at it for the remaining three games of the series, and, after TV cameras picked up some of their greatest hits, other people started bringing their own signs to the game. The signs appeared during the first game of the series, on Friday, written in Sharpie on neon poster stock and held aloft deep in the right-field stands by a pair of young men in Mets jerseys.
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