Submitted stories

One of the reasons for starting the blog was to make the posting of sent in stories a bit easier. So here are a few of the recent ones as they were sent to me - so excuse any misspellings :)

OK, so I was at Angel Stadium during an Angels-Yankees
playoff game in '05. Everybody down there HATED the Yankees with a passion.
This one Yanks fan got arrested after throwing beer at Garret Anderson.
So, here's the main story. Alex Rodriguez was batting, and at first,
the crowd was silenced. Then the marquee brought up that A-Rod gets paid
1200 bucks FOR STRIKING OUT!!! At that point, the fans were livid with
his (A-Rod's ) pompous attitude. The crowd was roaringly chanting
"OVERRATED!OVERRATED!" Then when Bernie Williams came up, the fans chanted "
Jelly belly! Jelly belly!" then, of course, there was the ever-classic
"YANKEES SUCK! YANKEES SUCK!" That was the most hilarious ballgame
ever!!!

(This one only works for batters with a 2.0 or lower batting
average) "Hey...My blood/aclohol content is higher than your batting
average!"

Years ago when the Yankees had Dave Winfield in rightfield
and Ricky Henderson in center, we were giving him "what for" for not
running fast enough to a foul that land IN the stadium. To be honest, he
took it well!!

Then he dropped a ball in the game. Again he took the clean heckling
well.

In between innings I yelled to him ... "Hey Dave, after the next
inning, how about helping me with an autograph?" He actually replied "You
really want me to give you an autograph after the razzin' you've given me
all night?"

"No, I want you to take this ball over to Ricky and get his autograph
for me!!!"

He gave me a big smile, took off his hat and bowed!! CLASSY GUY!

Doug Eddings and California's third strike law

So was it a called out, or simply a called strike three? We'll never know, but it's unlikely to ever satisfy fans of the Angels who feel they were done out of an out, and as it turns out, done out of a win. Signs reading 'Chicago White Sox: Fixing games since 1919' turned up as expected in Anaheim for the next game ,and so did the boo-birds who fixated on A.J. Pierzynski and Umpire Doug Eddings. Fans cheered loudly each time Eddings, who was manning the right field line in Game 3, made a correct call of a fair or foul ball.

FYI, it was long-time New York Yankees organist Mr. Eddie Layton who is credited with writing the fan-favorite and ballpark staple "da..da..dum da dum....Charge!" Wilbur Snapp is another famous ballpark organist who made his fame by being ejected from a minor-league game after he heckled the umpires with "Three Blind Mice,".

Origins of Heckling

Baseball hecklers do not have the monopoly on heckling. In fact, the origins of "heckling" can be found in the textile trade. They were the ones who combed out flax or hemp fibres. Its meaning as we know it today took shape in the early 19th Century when radical, unionised 'hecklers' would interrupt those responsible for reading out the day's news.

And so it was that the word became associated with rapid fire questions aimed to "tease" or "comb out" truths that the speaker might wish to conceal or avoid.

If we look back further, we see that heckling was going on much earlier, in Elizabethan theatre, where it was accepted as part of the boisterous atmosphere to shout at stage-actors. Heckling was famously characterised in the 1970's "Muppet Show" by the old gentlemen in the balcony named Statler and Waldorf.

Names on uniforms

I read recently that both the Dodgers and the Cubs do not wear names on the back of their uniforms this year. That is a shame for hecklers, as it makes our job more difficult. I guess if it means you are forced to pay a few $$ for a program, then you've paid the extra fee for heckling. So there goes the excuse that I paid for my seat, so that gives me the right to heckle. Now it can be, I bought a program, and THAT gives me the right to heckle.

Add the name Henry Belcher to the list of hecklers who belong in the Heckling Hall of Fame. A season ticket holder at Bluefield Bowen Field, he has been named by differnt Minor League Baseball publications as one of the nations top ten hecklers.

Here's a story that comes out of Chicago's Wrigley Field...A fan was being asked what his favorite line was that he's heard in that park, famous supposedly for it's heckling. His answer? "San Diego has an outfielder whose last name is Hidzu," he said. "Some drunk guy stands up and yells, 'Adam eats poo.' The whole right field was chanting it."

New site design

A major site redesign for the heckledepot, mainly cosmetic but I think it's a really cool look. The site remains primarily a content site, with no flashing lights or bells and whistles. I hope it goes over well, it's based on an old, classic style baseball card. I haven't bothered with any change of look for the golf, basketball, or any other sports heckle page. Not all the pages are updated as I type this, but will be by the end of the week.

I'm looking through the papers from last week regarding the incident in Toronto where Rafael Palmeiro wore ear plugs to block out the crowd. The hecklers were getting to him about the roids. Found the story to go with the picture, here it is...

Baltimore Orioles' Rafael Palmeiro, wearing earplugs, runs back to the dugout after popping out to Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Dave Bush in the fourth inning of AL action in Toronto, in this Aug. 30, 2005 photo. Palmeiro's baseball season is over, the Baltimore Orioles told him Friday, the result of a positive test for steroids that severely tainted his remarkable career and proved to be too big a distraction for his teammates to ignore.

Barry Bonds getting heckled by racists

This article is upsetting (click the title above this post). Hecklers like these give fans a bad name, and heckling a bad reputation. There are certain topics that are definitely over the line, and for me, anything about a players personal life and certainly his nationality and skin colour are off limits.

For some reason I don't think Barry's alleged steroid use should be off limits though, and that is why stories like this one from the San Francisco Chronicle make me smile. Posters saying Junk Bonds and cardboard asterisks - I don't think that's over the line, but a man's marriage or child custody problems, that is different. Don't ask me why.

Baseball Heckling Blog

A Baseball Fan's Journey to Better Heckling:

I once was a hapless baseball heckler. But I had no idea exactly how bad I was until the summer of 1996. It was then, while taking in a Toronto Blue Jays game with a few friends, a friend pitched a particularly bad line towards the visiting Minnesota Twins bullpen. Looking down on Greg Hansell, the line was "Hey Hansell, where's Grettel?". It was Twins catcher Matt Walbeck who turned around uttered the words that changed my life. He said, 'You're the worst hecklers I've ever heard in my life,'. We felt like idiots. It was then and there that I realized the need to improve my powers of harassment, but quickly realized there was a woeful lack of literature devoted to the art of baseball heckling.

The web as we know it today, was then in it's infancy, but the newsgroups turned out to be the perfect place to start my search. A few posts asking for the funniest line ever heard at the ballpark resulted in dozens of responses, so much so that over 500 baseball one-liners were gathered within months. Some were viciously witty, others were not-so-clever cliches, but since those early days, the list has grown to over 2000 of the best zingers. Some of the best submissions include:

*I've seen better picks in an Afro!
*Olive Oyl's got better curves than you!
*Cinderella gets to the ball faster than you do!

and my personal favorite...
*How's your Japanese?

I will use this blog to post whatever daily thoughts I can muster about my site, the Baseball Heckle Depot http://www.heckledepot.com, and baseball heckling in general.