Yankees fan tried to pull a Jeffrey Maier, gets perp walked by the NYPD, and the New York gets swept out of the postseason anyways
Thirty years after a 12 year old kid reached over the right field wall and handed Derek Jeter a home run, a grown man in a dark blue bomber jacket tried to run it back in the Bronx. The universe had other plans.
Anthony Volpe’s would-be game-tying homer in the bottom of the sixth of ALDS Game 3 got wiped off the board for fan interference, the Rays held on for a 4-3 win, and the Yankees got swept out of October again. You genuinely cannot make this stuff up.
Volpe drove one to deep left, and our guy in the front row stuck his arms out over the ledge and played outfielder. It went to a long review, and MLB came back and nuked it, saying it had “definitively determined the spectator interfered” after going through every angle.
Their ruling was that the ball wasn’t leaving the yard and wasn’t getting caught either, so Volpe got an RBI double, one run scored instead of two, and the batter got parked at second base.
The Rays got out of the inning still up 4-3, and that’s exactly where the scoreboard stayed for the rest of the night. Season over.
Anthony Vlope’s Game-Tying Home Run Overturned Due to Fan Interference
The Walk of Shame:
Stadium security was on this dude almost the second the replay ruling came down. Video shows him being walked out of the outfield seats by a uniformed NYPD officer and a few members of Yankee Stadium security, with his buddy in a pinstriped jacket and cap tagging along for the ride.
The wildest part is how little anybody around him seemed to care. No boos, no beers flying, no Bronx fury. Just a bunch of Yankee fans staring into the void while their season circled the drain, which honestly might be the most damning reaction of all.
The Yankees Fan Didn’t Cost Them Anyways…
Here’s what everybody screaming at this guy online is missing. Read MLB’s ruling again. The ball wasn’t going out. Without his arms anywhere near it, that’s a double off the wall and the exact same result the umpires gave. The fan didn’t steal a home run from the Yankees, he just failed to manufacture one, and those are two very different things.
What actually lost that game is the Yankees putting the tying run on second base with a chance to do something about it and coming up empty. That’s on the guys in the dugout, not the idiot in the bomber jacket.
He was dumb, sure, and leaning over a wall in a playoff game is a terrible look, especially at home where interference only ever hurts your own team but blaming him for the sweep is just Yankee fans needing somebody to yell at who isn’t Aaron Boone.
Thirty Years of Karma?
This one feels so good. The Yankees have lived off the Jeffrey Maier gift since 1996. Baltimore got robbed in broad daylight, the Yankees went on to win the World Series, and the Bronx has spent three decades acting like it was a charming little piece of baseball folklore.
Now a fan tries the exact same trick, replay exists, and it gets thrown out on the spot while the Rays finish off a sweep. The baseball gods after all, have very long memories.
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