Yankees' Teixeira rips fan who bumped into him pursuing foul ball
A fan who was sitting along the first-base line at Sunday’s game between the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees got a bit overzealous while trying to take home a souvenir, and New York first baseman Mark Teixeira was not pleased about it.
With the Yankees trailing 2-0 in the top of the ninth, Teixeira tried to reach into the stands to make a play on a foul ball. He was unable to come up with the catch, and a fan came over to try to collect the ball well after it bounced off a seat. Watch it here.
In his haste, the fan bumped into Teixeira. There was clearly no malice toward Teixeira, but the veteran slugger snapped at the fan and seemed upset after the game.
“He ran into me. He really wanted that baseball,” Teixeira told reporters, per Dan Martin of the New York Post. “I’m all right, thank God. You can insult. You can’t assault. We know you are upset we lost three in a row. Keep it to insults.”
The fan clearly was excited about the possibility of going home with a foul ball. You could argue that it was rude of him to barge into Teixeira like that, but the act had nothing to do with the Yankees a few outs away from getting swept by the Blue Jays.
Texiera’s exchange with a fan came on the same day another Yankees fan threw a Jose Bautista home run back onto the field and hit Brett Gardner in the head. There was no intent there, either, and the fan was not ejected.
“Any time a ball is coming in from the stands or from the pitcher, a baseball is a hard object,” Gardner said. “I have a hard head, so it’s all good. … The home run was hit so far, I don’t know how far the ball got thrown. It wasn’t like it was coming from the second row. It was a long ways away.”
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