Seattle fans add a little salt by booing A-Rod after injury
Jul 25, 2012, 9:20 AM | Updated: 1:43 pm
 New York Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez rolls on the ground after being hit by a pitch in the eighth inning of a baseball game against the Seattle Mariners, Tuesday, July 24, 2012, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Kevin P. Casey) |
>>>A-Rod breaks hand, Seattle beats
Yankees
Even as Alex Rodriguez writhed on the ground in pain,
suffering from a broken wrist, Seattle fans didn’t give
the New York Yankees player a break.
“Obviously he was in real pain, but the Mariner fans just
continued to let him have it,” says 710 ESPN anchor Bill
Swartz.
Rodriguez was hit by an 88 mph changeup from Felix
Hernandez in the eighth inning of Tuesday’s game against
the Yankees.
Some Mariners fans still see Alex Rodriguez as enemy
number one after he left Seattle for a lucrative
contract with the Texas Rangers in 2001.
“I don’t boo Alex when he comes back,” says Swartz. “But a
lot of people still do believing he was a traitor.”
It’s one thing to boo Rodriguez in regular play, but quite
another when he’s injured, Swartz and Luke Burbank, of the
Ross and Burbank
Show, agree.
The Yankees say Rodriguez suffered a non-displaced
fracture of the hand in the strike.
“I thought it was classless,” says Swartz.
Burbank concedes it’s not what you’d call “the proper way
to behave,” but says he was impressed with the boldness
shown by Seattle fans, crossing that line into the
inappropriate.
One of his biggest frustrations as a Seattle fan, he says,
is the “Northwest nice” approach to competition.
“We just say ‘Good job guys, you really tried hard,’ and
that doesn’t instill enough fear for the players on the
field,” says Burbank.
Rabid fans in other cities often engage in things that
cross the line of appropriateness. Burbank says whatever
the reason, he’s pleased to see a little of that fever in
Seattle sports fans.
“I do like the idea that Mariner fans are growing a pair,
and kind of becoming salty.”
By JAMIE GRISWOLD, MyNorthwest.com Editor
The
Associated Press contributed to this report.
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