He’s a pretty good dribbler, too.
Yep, I guess the Lakers All-Star team needed Fletch a little more than they thought. Normally, I hate everything about Detroit, but Ben Wallace is a beast (and the ‘fro is nothing short of dy-no-MITE!!), ‘Sheed actually behaved himself and played ball, and a cast of 4 or 5 solid players stepped up and did their part, too, and down go the Lakers. I’m glad to see it. Until it happens with my team, I hate dynasties. Because with dynasties come bandwagons. And bandwagon “fans” are the worst “fans” you can have.
Speaking of fans, I’m about tired of hearing the bad press this guy has been getting. Sure, he made a bad decision going after that foul ball with as much effort as he had, but who cares? The kid got bumped around, not “assaulted” as some reports would lead you to believe. If you’ve ever been in the situation where you had a shot at a foul ball, EVERYONE is a kid, eight to eighty, blind, crippled or crazy…EVERYONE. The only thing I can think is that after the guy tumbled into the kid, and had to pick the ball off the ground, he probably should have given it up, or at least acknowledged the kid in some way. Buy him some peanuts or Cracker Jack, or something, if the ball means that much to you. (Which, in the case of the four foul balls I’ve caught in my time, it does. Then again, I’ve caught all of mine mostly on the fly. If you want proof, I’ll email you proof. I just can’t get the file small enough to pass along to everyone.) In fact, the last one I caught (the aforementioned “proof”) was on the fly, reaching down in the area of the small boy in front of me. I made the catch, made no contact with the boy or ANYONE around me, didn’t block anyone out, the ball just found my glove. I kept it, and got booed for not giving it to the kid. Screw them. That baby was mine!
This guy isn’t a “jerk”, “scum”, “schmuck” or whatever other names I’ve heard him called in the past two days, he’s just a fan. Maybe he crossed *a bit* of a line, but I don’t think so. If anyone is just as much of a jerk, its the kid’s mom. (Or maybe even the writers who took the time and effort to track down the guy’s name, age, address and place of employment. Are you kidding me?) Instead of trying to shield her son, she took to beating the guy with a program and calling him a “jerk” in front of her son. Now she’s parading her son to morning news programs, and he’s made quite the collection for himself (which I say good for him, hopefully a baseball fan for life was made that day, especially a Rangers fan!), and she’s still acting like her kid was a victim. Um, lady, you’re sitting in box seats 12 rows back, I doubt your kid is much of a victim of anything.
Though at the very least, it has taken some of the focus off of the back to back losses the Rangers have suffered. The St. Louis one, I can handle. But Cincinnati!?!? Ugh.