TIME FOR MANFRED TO CHASE REINSDORF AND MELT THOSE ACUNA JR. MORONS
Baseball has major security issues when the Atlanta right fielder is attacked after Chicago’s interim police chief said the shots came inside the ballpark — the first time it has been said since 2015
If an MVP-caliber player is pummeled by two loons in a game, or a fan is burned by gunfire in a ballpark on Chicago’s South Side, then the commissioner can stop his foolish counting. Rob Manfred loves to calculate between 15 and 20 seconds. Now, he can stop worrying about the pitch clock and start saving lives.
Baseball is losing mortified fans again. After regaining them with a shortened pace, the sport is wasting them with an unconscionable run, which started Friday evening when a woman came to a hospital with “a very obvious gunshot wound to the right thigh” and “quite a bit of blood on the ground.” If that wasn’t enough on a Monday when Chicago’s interim police superintendent said he’s “almost completely dispelled” thoughts bullets were fired outside Guaranteed Rate Field, then came news Atlanta’s Ronald Acuna Jr. was confronted by two fans in right field several hours later in Colorado.
You want fans assaulted by gunfire inside a stadium? This isn’t ever supposed to happen when metal detectors were assembled by Opening Day 2015, but sure enough, they happened during a White Sox game. Once the interim chief, Fred Waller, said two women were hit by gunfire from inside the park, it demanded Manfred to pull out a “Weapon-Free” Workplace Policy. I don’t care how long Jerry Reinsdorf has owned the Sox, since 1981. I don’t care how much b.s. he has pulled with commissioners, owners and players since taking over almost 43 years ago. This is where Manfred must stop protecting a misguided, 87-year-old goof and start protecting the sport from fans and lawyers.
Yes, a big bunch of Chicago attorneys should demand all sorts of money for multiple fans who want payouts that night. Because this is the first time a cop has said shots came from inside a stadium. In 2017, a woman was shot near the dugout while watching a Cardinals-Brewers game in St. Louis, where police determined fire came from a fan standing a mile away. That’s in a town that usually adores the Cardinals like a Christmas tree, but Chicago simply can’t stand the Sox and their 1-in-106 championship trance and hope they soon go away. Might this be the machine chasing them to a place such as Nashville, which is what Reinsdorf suggested early last week? Did he create this occurrence as he spoke?
Or do you want your superstar ravaged by a stiff who wants a selfie with Acuna, then another who made contact with him and knocked him to the ground? Either way, Major League Baseball is in trouble from attorneys helping fans or repping ballplayers. As Sox reliever Aaron Bummer told the Chicago Sun-Times, which broke news of the 42-year-old woman with the wound in her leg: “That’s crazy to think that is a possibility. It’s scary. If there is a gun going off in the ballpark, it’s terrifying.” As it is, the Chicago Tribune reported stadium security is handled by At Your Service, LLC — whose registered agent is William Waters, vice president of finance for the Sox. If so, Manfred might want a long word with Reinsdorf, Waters and whatever the ballpark helpers were doing at the gates.
You know, maybe the other MLB owners want the guy long gone.
Now you have the scene in Denver, where only Acuna’s goodwill made it less than a shameful scene. "I was a little scared at first. I think the fans were out there and asking for pictures,” he said through an interpreter. “I really couldn't say anything because at that point, security was already there and we were already kind of tangled up, but security was able to get there and everything's OK.”
I don’t have to be particular. If Acuna is out for the season or a woman has her leg blown off, Reinsdorf loses a portion of billions and Manfred has to give up TV money. As it is, baseball’s security needs a colossal overhaul. How does a major-league team in a large market allow someone through a gate with a gun? And how do morons allow the fans to escape into right field?
There were scenes before 2015. A fan died in 1950, killed by a bullet to the temple from a .45-caliber handgun outside the Polo Grounds in New York, from nearby Coogan’s Bluff. In 2000, a 64-year-old woman was hit in Kansas City, with no comment on whether her one hospital night was from an internal or external bullet. In 2012, the Tampa Bay Rays decided a fan was hit by gunfire outside Tropicana Field, hard to believe since the park is indoors.
Manfred has no choice but to confront Reinsdorf. If this is where he sells his franchise, hey, goodbye and get lost. As for Acuna, why now?
“That's disappointing, for me, that it happens, especially in our ballpark, in our town," Colorado manager Bud Black said. “That bothers me. It bothers me in general when I see it elsewhere, in all sports.”
“You don't want to see that happen, I know that," Atlanta manager Brian Snitker said. "You don't know what they will do when they get out there. It's a scary situation.”
Rob Manfred can start by answering his phone. Right now, he isn’t answering questions about Reinsdorf. It’s about time to speak to the preacher men.
###
Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.