Mike Lupica Puts Anti-Yankee Behavior In Perspective.

"There have been nearly 60 games played between the Yankees and Red Sox over the past two seasons and one month. Before you even talk about some of the most intense games in baseball history, it is worth mentioning that this rivalry, reconstituted under the new Red Sox management, has included some of the most intense April games ever played.

And in all of those games, there have been two significant incidents involving players and fans."

Of all the astonishing misrepresentations of the truth that Mike Lupica has misrepresented, this has to be the most astonsishing and the most misrepresented.

Lupica is actually defending Boston fan behavior because there have been only two fan-player incidents in the past 60 games.

For one thing, Lupica is ignoring the fans who trashed the field in the 1999 ALCS -- despicable behavior which was repeated at Yankee Stadium last season -- and the constant anti-Yankee sentiment that flourishes at Fenway Park.

It's just a fact. Maybe Lupica sits in the press box, but I usually sit in the bleachers ... and try to keep a low profile.

"Bobby Murcer said on YES that he thought the guy was definitely taking a swing at Sheffield. Justice got hysterical on the postgame show, as if this had somehow happened at Fenway Park at Auburn Hills. Only Michael Kay provided some reasoned thought to the proceedings, basically saying that he wasn't going to say the fan was swinging at Sheffield because he didn't know that.

Neither do we."

Neither do who?

I saw the replay 100 times, I only needed to see it once. Man swings arm, arm hits other man in head. For Lupica and Kay, that's not enough proof that he was swinging at Sheffield. In fact, the fan in the stands was probably just randomly swinging his arm, and Sheffield was inconsiderate enough to hit him in the fist with his head.

But that's not how the world works. If you "accidentally" hit a grown man in the face, you might "accidentally" get a pair of cleats in your groin. I'm not saying I purposely kicked him, your Honor, I was just sort of swinging my foot and he moved his groin into the path of my kick.

Funny how these "fan-player incidents" have occurred twice in the past 30-or-so games the Yankee have played at Fenway (since we're talking about fan behavior at Fenway, how's about we cut Lupica's "games played" number in half? You know, like a truthful person would do).

So in the past 30-or-so games that the Yankees have played have Fenway, there have been only two fights between Yankee players and the fans.

What is everybody getting so worked up about? Fenway isn't dangerous.

But I'm trying to think of any other incident in my lifetime where a Yankee player got into a fight with a fan. I remember the KC fans getting out of hand with Chuck Knoblauch, but the worst thing that happened was throwing hot dog wrappers on the field.

Thousands upon thousands of road games and a grand total of zero fan-player incidents, yet Lupica sees nothing particularly unusual if it occurs twice in thirty games.


"House was plain stupid to reach down into the field of play, whatever his reasons. The way even charming children are stupid to reach down with their gloves when a fly ball is still catchable, say, in a big Yankee-Oriole playoff game."

Lupica has truly reached a new low.

He has the nerve to compare a fan -- a teenage fan -- reaching for a ball in play to a grown man hitting a player in the face. Very convincing argument. It's totally the same thing.

"Whatever his reasons"? His "reasons" were to smack Gary Sheffield.

Another Hero of the Bleachers. His punishment should be five minutes alone with Gary Sheffield in a dark alley.

"This was like some sports version of 'Rashomon' in the end: Everybody saw something different. Or what they wanted to see."

I'm not sure what Mike Lupica saw. It must be difficult for him to watch the television while his head's in the sand.