Lord, am I sick and tired of hearing about the poor Philadelphia teenager who got tasered by the cops when the kid ran on to the field at Citizens Bank Park this week.
This kid is an idiot. He's not a hero. He's not to be cheered. He's a self-centered 17 year old punk who thinks thousands of fans paid money to see him get his 15 seconds of fame.
I'll give him this--he's got some serious moves. He avoided stadium security/groundskeepers for quite a while before Officer Not-So-Friendly drilled him in the back with his taser. Punk goes down. Cuffs go on. End of story, right?
Hardly. I admit it, when I first read about a teenager getting tasered for running onto the field of a baseball game, it hit me as a little much.
Then I shut my mouth and listened.
I heard a Central Wisconsin cop call in to "The JIm Rome Show" the following morning and had some common sense poured into my gaping mellon. My take completely changed.
The kid, and any other mope so lamely motivated, is guilty of criminal trespass. They know what they're doing, and they know it's wrong. And, after what happened to a Kansas City coach all those years ago at Chicago's Comiskey Park when a father and son decided it would be great fun to hop a fence and beat the snot out of him, well, one can only assume that an interloper's intentions may not always be the noblest. If each and every such moron was treated as the potential threat he or she may be, maybe this trend would finally end. What would people be saying Tuesday morning if the kid had done something truly ugly and untoward to a player or ump as he evaded capture Monday night? "Where were the cops?", the backbenchers would scream. "Why didn't they do something before this happened?"
The cop on Rome's show also pointed out that the officer on the field has an obligation to end things quickly before they escalate--once the police are on the field, they and the stuff they carry (guns, clubs, knives, etc.) are in play. If the cop makes a tackle and the interloper gets a weapon, what happens then? The taser is the logical choice.
From the reaction, you'd think the officer shot the kid in the back with his Glock. The taser dropped the donkey in his tracks, and the incident was over. The idiot was even able to leave the field under his own power. Yes, we've all seen the stories where local reporters get tased as part of a sweeps week promotion to show us how painful the process is. What we don't hear enough about is that, after the momentary discomfort, the suspect is pliable and otherwise unscathed. We live in results-based times. The officer brought the right tool for the right tool..er, I mean job.
Sure, we could let the players meet out justice, the way Baltimore Cotts lineback Mike Curtis did back in the late 60's....
,,,but players are huge investments to teams and big legal targets for idiots. If Mr. Curtis did that today, chances are Sir Drinks-A-Lot-Who-Got-Leveled would lawyer-up in a heartbeat.
I say let the tasers wave. You wanna screw with my baseball bliss? Taste the taze!
One more thing that might end this whole tired, worn out, useless interruption: stop cheering for these ass-clowns when they hop the fence. Boo 'em and heap scorn upon them. Pray to God all they want to do is run around where they don't belong.
And, hope there's a cop with his taser out of his holster at the ready.
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