from Amazon
Sunday, February 07, 2010
Spitting delaying honor
We know about Alomar. I did not know about Ted Williams:
August 7, 1956 - In a game against the Yankees at Fenway Park, Williams drop an easy fly ball and is booed lustily by Red Sox fans. At the end of the inning, Williams jogs toward the dugout and launches into one of the worst tantrums of his career by spitting at fans near the dugout. Williams is fined $5,000 but tells the Boston Herald he doesn’t regret his actions. “I’d spit again at those booing bastards,” Williams says.
...
July 23, 1958 - In a game at Kansas City, Williams fails to run all the way to first on a groundout and the crowd loudly boos him. Williams, in turn, spits at the fans and is fined $250.
In 1956, Ted made 125K, so he was fined 4% of his salary. That’d be like a 25MM$ player being fined one MILLION dollars for spitting on fans. That’s how much of an afront that incident had.
***
Patrick Roy gave the Montreal fans the one-finger salute in his last game. We laughed it off by the next day.
Ah, but the Holy Writers, they will always talking about the spitting incident (of Alomar) because it benefits them to act like the gatekeepers of all that is holy about baseball.
If I remebered correctly I don’t think Roy gave “us” the one finger salute. He just went by Mario Tremblay and tells Ronald Corey, That this was his last game as a Canadiens. I do remeber Guy Carbonneau giving the finger to a journalist (frontpage of the journal of Montreal) while playing golf one week after the Canadien’s elimination from the playoffs. He was traded weeks later. You can’t be rude with a journalist even tough they followed during your off-season to be critical of you because you’re playing golf instead of playing hockey.
And if I was Ted WIlliams I might not had spit but I would have been pretty mad against the fans to have the audacity to “boo” me after all the great (great great great) seasons he had for them…