That teenager who got tazed by a Philadelphia cop for running on the field at a Phillies baseball game isn’t getting much sympathy. Most online comments I’ve read are along the lines of “the attention-craving schmo got what he deserved.”
Baseball games are already obscenely long at about three and a half hours each. Adding another 15 minutes to let idiots run loose is too much. Besides, in this era of extremists and mad bombers, who can say for sure what somebody’s going to do.
Back in the old days, two similar events had very different outcomes.
When Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1974, he’d been receiving death threats for months from fans who couldn’t stomach the thought of a black man breaking what was considered the greatest sports record of all time. Watch this video of Aaron rounding third base. Two fans run onto the field and grab him, and yet no security guard is anywhere in sight.
Now compare that to this 1971 game where a fan runs onto the football field during a Baltimore Colts game and meets up with badass linebacker Mike “Mad Dog” Curtis.
