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Blue Jays release statement regarding fan incident

The Toronto Blue Jays’ victory over the Baltimore Orioles in Tuesday’s American League Wild Card Game was at least partially marred by an incident in the seventh inning.

As Hyun-soo Kim was catching a ball that ended the seventh inning, a fan threw a can of beer that landed very close to him. Naturally, it sparked immediate outrage from Kim, center fielder Adam Jones and manager Buck Showalter.

The Blue Jays released a statement Wednesday, condemning the act.

This is certainly a nice statement but it also misses the mark.

The Blue Jays (and all teams) should do more to encourage those around the person who threw the drink to point him/her out. It was a sellout game. There were dozens, if not hundreds of fans within a close vicinity of whoever threw the can. Any one of those fans could have potentially seen the throw.

Yet, it took nearly a full day for the fan to be identified.

As bad as they are, these incidents happen. When you get thousands of people in one place — many of whom are over served — someone may decide to be an idiot and throw something on the field.

Of course, that should never happen. Outside of making noise, fans should never do anything to impact the game. They should certainly never do anything that could harm one of the players, or a fellow fan.

It shouldn’t happen, but it does. When it happens, the other fans need to step up and get the person pointed out and removed. There were thousands of people at this game. All but one refrained from throwing a beer on the field.

But when the others allow that fan to do so without immediate punishment, they allow him/her to represent the entire fan base. That’s not fair, of course, but it’s the reality. All teams should use this as a reminder to all fans to point people like this out. If that doesn’t happen, then idiots will represent every fan base in every sport.

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