And thus baseball's Destro, Bob DuPuy, spake against players interacting with heckling fans during games.
Thus far this season, Cincinnati's Ken Griffey Jr. autographed an athletic supporter and threw it at a fan in Los Angeles, and Toronto's Vernon Wells threw an autographed ball with a message to a fan in Cleveland.
"It's inappropriate and won't be condoned," DuPuy said.
While it's one thing for players to get into dust-ups with hecklers, it seems to me that Griffey and Wells each turned boorish, heckling idiots into happy fans with some refreshingly self-effacing humor and by giving them one-of-a-kind collectors items. The guys Griffey and Wells allegedly taunted are going to tell their grandkids about these incidents, and it will only help the game.
If DuPuy cracks down on gestures like Griffey's and Wells' without paying attention to context and intent, he's going to turn baseball into the farce that is the NBA.
