A thing about Yankees fans is that they share a single, metaphysical consciousness. This Highlander-type immortal marches in both the Columbus Day and Dominican Day parades, thinks it's a bargain to drink so many $11 Coronas at Stan's before a game that he never makes it through the gates, and has really strong opinions about congestion pricing. Jeffrey Maier grew up, spiritually, to become every single person in this GIF. And all those guys combined, Voltron-style, to become the dude who tried to rip Mookie Betts's glove off Tuesday night.
These mooks showed more fight than anyone else in a Yankees jersey had to that point in the World Series, when in the first inning they attempted to wrest from Betts a fly ball which he had just snagged for an out. When Betts understandably declined to let go, mook No. 1 tried to pry open his mitt, while mook No. 2 subdued the outfielder's free hand. Even more incredibly, they argued with the umpire that the play should be called a foul ball because Betts eventually dropped it, and argued with security that they shouldn't be booted from the stadium because they didn't lean over the wall to interfere with play. Neither argument worked.
Betts didn't want to talk about the incident, which occurred in the first inning with the Dodgers up 2-0 but ended with an 11-4 Yankees win to avoid being swept. Ben Casparius, who started the game for L.A., said he'd "never seen anything like it. It's pretty interesting. It was obviously very early in the game so I think it kind of set the tone."
As most of a tri-state area exhaled with relief that they didn't go to high school with this guy, reporters identified the fan as Austin Capobianco of Connecticut, a reveal that made me say "of course" twice. (For further "of courses": His most recent tweet involves both Brazzers and Barstool.) And lest you think Capobianco gave into the intrusive thoughts on the spur of the moment, no, he's been planning and preparing for this very situation:
"We always joke about the ball in our area," Capobianco, 38, said at a local bar after the game. "We're not going to go out of our way to attack. If it's in our area, we're going to 'D' up.
"Someone defends, someone knocks the ball. We talk about it. We're willing to do this."
"I know when I'm in the wrong and as soon as I did it, I was like, 'Boys I'm out of here,'" Capobianco told ESPN. "I patrol that wall and they know that."
OK, man. All your training and you couldn't even open a guy's glove 2-on-1.
Capobianco, a season-ticket holder, claims he was told he'd be allowed to attend tonight's Game 5, though I seriously cannot imagine that's true (the Yankees didn't respond to ESPN's request for comment), and shouldn't be. The number one rule of sporting events is that you don't touch the players, and someone who can't abide by that shouldn't be allowed out of Fairfield County, let alone back on field level. This is one of those things, like Yankees fans, that are far funnier in theory than in practice.
