A Decade Over the Fence

This little fuckhead is back:

Jeffrey Maier, who at the age of 12 turned what God intended to be pop-up out into a Derek Jeter homerun, is getting a second wind of fame, thanks to a budding baseball career at Wesleyan and a role in a new student film (by another Wesleyan student) called I Hate Jeffrey Maier. So much for Washington Post sports columnist Tony Kornhiser, who wrote of then-prepubescent Maier, "He is already past the high point in his life and coming down on the other side… By next week he'll be nostalgia. He's 12 years old, and it's over for him."

Well, Maier has had a lot of time to recover since 1996, but if you watch the clip from the movie available here, with the former "Angel In the Outfield" shuffling around in his dumpy-looking sweats, you'll see that the years can be rough, even on non-Baltimoreans.

Comments

[donaldamaskete]

Budding Baseball career? His college career is almost over. besides, the mainstream media, Deadspin, ESPN,etc have been talking about his college career and draft prospects for weeks now…

[fyodor]

It’s cute how seriously humans take their sports.

[Let's Go Yankees]

Jeffrey Maier was simply God’s instrument in ensuring the manifest destiny of the New York Yankees.

[rac]

Well, I guess in the good ol’ days of Aquinas, it was a fly ball. But, in a positivist world, it was a homerun because the umpire said it was. And all us Yankee fans agreed. And Orioles fans need to get a life.

[Baseball? ZZZZZZZ...]

I’m surprised he was awake to make the catch.

[FinFangFoom]

Tim Cavanaugh seems to be an angry, angry man today.

[JD]

Why, exactly, does anyone care that much? It’s baseball. At the end of the day it goes back in the toybox of life.

[highnumber]

Why, exactly, does anyone care that much? It’s baseball.

But, but, but IT’S BASEBALL!
Aw, ask George Will. He’ll explain it to you.

[Lowdog]

I’m as big a sports fan as the next guy, but baseball, while a very interesting sport mentally, just doesn’t have a very intriguing aspect to me, physically.

Now ice hockey, that’s a sport that has it all.

[Adam]

I remember how ridiculous it was that he was paraded all around like a hero or something. He’s not a hero, he cheated.

[mediageek]

“Aw, ask George Will. He’ll explain it to you.”

While he’s at it, perhaps he can explain bow ties.

[Tim Cavanaugh]

He’s not a hero, he cheated.

If you read his explanation of the event in that Chronicle story, it’s fairly believable, and suggests more that he was just excited about catching a ball than trying to influence the outcome of the game. The scandal was in the call, and the parading around of the kid. (To this day, Yankees fans treat him like a hero.) That having been said, as neither a New York nor a Baltimore fan, he always struck me as a really annoying kid (but then I’d probably strike him the same way if I were on David Letterman, Good Morning America, etc).

[SmokingPenguin]

In a couple years, he’s going to be on Celebrity Boxing against that guy who caught the foul ball at Wrigley.

[mitch]

I was totally into hating on that Harvard girl, because I actually read books, but I don’t know anything about sports, so this is leaving me cold. I totally support reason.com becoming the go to place for hating [pop] cultural figures, though. Hating political figures is both too easy (“All politicians suck!”) and too hard (“Do I really have enough knowledge to know what good policy towards Iraq or Iran is? Of course I don’t.”) But hating artists, writers, musicians, and actors feels juuuust riiiiight….

[van]

Who? Why?

[crimethink]

Smoking Penguin,

The difference is that Steve Bartman wanted nothing more than to cease being famous, turning down offers to appear on talk shows, etc.

Then again, it might have been suicide to do otherwise, unless he was planning an immediate move to Florida.

[dflynn]

The only question is whether the kid was a Yankee fan or a Baltimore fan. If he was a Baltimore fan he was an idiot and should have been ostracized. If he was a Yankee fan, he did his duty as a fan to help his team win.

If they didn’t want fans to influence the game, they wouldn’t let them cross the air space of the playing field. Foul balls are much more common. If your team is in the field, the true fan backs up to give the player room to catch the foul fly. If your team is at bat, you make sure you reach above the fielder to prevent the out.

I was at a Redsox game early in the 78 season when an idiot fan cost the Sox the pennant. With a man on first, a Sox hitter sent one rolling to the right field stands. The idiot grabbed the ball making it a ground rule double so the runner failed to score. If the idiot had understood what being a fan is all about, he would have let the ball alone, the run would have scored, the Sox would not have lost the game in extra innings, and Bucky Dent would never have had the chance to hit a pop fly into the screen in a one game playoff.

[SmokingPenguin]

crimethink – Fair enough, although he might think differently after time has healed those wounds, and his ARM mortgage rate spikes.

dflynn – He may have been a White Sox fan. OT, what was it about the 77 & 78 Red Sox? They were one of the best teams in baseball, yet they would roll over for the White Sox. I think they had a better record against the Yankees or the Royals than against the White Sox for those two years.

[the other Mark]

As an Ohioan, I’m pleased to see anything that causes Baltimore pain. God bless that cheating little New York shitbag.

[Rover Random]

Whatever, life sucks. Leave the plebeians to their sports games. I mean, shit, how else can you talk to the guy in the next stall?

[Matt Tievsky]

No. NO. NOOOOOOO!!!

Back in those days (when Cal Ripken was on the team, Davey Johnson was managing it, and the Nationals didn’t exist), I was a big-time O’s fan. It was Game 1 of the AL Championship. The O’s were winning that game 2-1 in the late innings, and that little pissant Jeffrey Maier reached and tied the game for the Yankees (who went on to win 3-2) because the ump (by his own admission) wasn’t watching. And the Yanks went on to win the series.

I thought I’d seen the last of that little fucker when I saw him crowing about it on TV after the game. I hated that kid so much I even remembered his name until today.

“I don’t have any regrets about it,” he says. Fuck him.

OK, I’m done.

[Marcvs]

Bartman didn’t lose the pennant for the Cubs, the Cubs did. People forget that they gave up eight unanswered runs after that and had another game to lose as well.

It sucked, but whining doesn’t change the fact that the Cubs lost that series themselves.

[Pro Libertate]

Is this kid available for hire? My Braves could use him during the playoffs. If he only specializes in AL East interference, then my number two team, the Devil Rays, could use more extensive help 🙂

[independent worm]

As an Ohioan, I’m pleased to see anything that causes Baltimore pain. God bless that cheating little New York shitbag.

Ah, fuck Cleveland.

[VM]

Fuck art modell.