The day that baseball fans wait for every year finally happened Thursday with opening day of the 2023 MLB season. The day is always full of hope, with every team starting with a clean slate and fans flocking to their favorite team’s stadium to take in the newest edition of their starting lineup.
The day is also apparently full of pent up rage and tension, as Los Angeles Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon had a fan by the shirt collar, cursing him out and even swinging at him following a matchup between the Angels and the Athletics.
The video begins with an Oakland Athletics fan walking towards an opening in the stands where the Angels team was returning to their locker room. As he gets close to the fence, Rendon grabs the fan by the shirt collar and you can hear him say:
“What’d you say?”
The fan responds, then Rendon says:
“Yeah you called me a b**** huh?”
The A’s faithful shakes his head no. Rendon rebuttles:
“Yeah you did. Yeah you did. Yeah motherf****r.”
The third baseman then releases the opposing fan’s shirt and swings his fist as the fan stands back up.
A fan near the camera shouts out:
“Calm down!”
The incident in its entirety can be seen below thanks to this post on Twitter from Talkin’ Baseball:
BASEBALL IS BACK!
Of course, Anthony Rendon should not have done that, and the third baseman will most likely be fined by the major leagues for his actions. But let’s have a conversation for a second…
Clearly this fan thought that his heckling was not being heard by the Los Angeles Angels player. Many fans go to games and for some reason like to yell expletives and derogatory statements at people who play the sport for a living.
“You suck Anthony Rendon!” says the man that was cut from his middle school baseball team.
I’m sure the Oakland fan was surprised at the confrontation between himself and Rendon, but I guarantee it won’t stop him from heckling in the future. We’ve seen more and more athletes comes out in recent years and speak out about how fans yell at them or treat them on social media. Hell, Kyrie Irving just this week had fans thrown out of the Dallas Mavericks game because they were yelling at him that the world was round.
If the fan heckling is a problem, I think this video is the perfect solution to the issue. Let fans say whatever they want, under the agreement that after the game (or during for that matter) the players can confront them face to face if they wish to.
Again, Rendon shouldn’t have done what he did, but at the same time, this might be the solution to the arrogant fan problem. If the encounters were allowed and looked something like this interaction, I think everyone would be perfectly fine with the content that comes from it.
