With the swirl of the post-Trade Deadline reaction and analysis, I suspect a lot about last night’s games around baseball is going to be missed. (I haven’t even had a chance to watch highlights from Jacob deGrom’s looooong-awaited return yet!)
Something I didn’t see until this morning is that Royals reliever Amir Garrett tossed a drink at a fan, in what appeared to be response to some “disrespectful” jawing from the fan. At least that’s what Garrett implied when he responded to the video overnight.
Here is the video and then Garrett’s response:
“Listen the disrespect is insane in these parks,” Garrett wrote on Twitter. “I really wish I could go to someone’s work and run my mouth. These are grown men talking slick. How miserable do you have to be with your own life?”
The video does not show clearly what was being said by the fan, and maybe even how long it had been going on before the video started. All we can really see is Garrett tossing the drink, and the fan then reacting with some surprise and trying to tell the security guard something (“I’m just talking,” I think?). We can also see a kid is sitting next to the fan, so that’s potentially not great.
I think we can say generally that, (1) tossing drinks on fans is probably not good, and Garrett is likely to hear from the league about this, (2) the Royals and White Sox will probably also seek to find out exactly what happened with this fan, and (3) there are ways to talk to players and have some fun, and there are ways to do it that are not acceptable. Again, we don’t know exactly what happened here other than what the video shows and what Garrett said. Seems not good overall, though.
Cubs fans, of course, are very familiar with Garrett because of his interactions with Javy Báez over the years, including even now that they are no longer on the Reds and Cubs, respectively.