(the next time Derek Lee and Jeromy Burnitz do the chest-bump, Derek should try it without a family of baby chicks stuffed down his jersey)
From MLB.com’s Carrie Muskat :
Former Chicago Cubs pitcher LaTroy Hawkins, now with the San Francisco Giants, did not get a warm reception in his return to Wrigley Field. Cubs first baseman Derrek Lee called the fans’ taunting and booing of Hawkins “classless.”
“I can’t win, right?” Hawkins said after Wednesday’s game, a 4-3 Cubs win over the Giants. “My mother and father told me a long time ago, everybody isn’t going to like you.”
The fans who stuck around for the eighth inning Tuesday night soundly booed Hawkins, who was dealt to the Giants on May 28. He had gotten negative feedback last year and this season in Chicago, including threats to his family, but Tuesday seemed more intense.
“It was worse [Tuesday] night,” Baker said when asked to compare the fans’ response last season and now. “At least they didn’t say, ‘Hawkins [stinks]’ before. That was bad. I was in the dugout saying, ‘Sorry, Hawk, but we’ve got to beat you.’ If you’re going to boo, you boo, get it over with and go about your business. That gave me chills a little bit to wonder who’s next on that kind of magnitude of the booing list.”
Wait a minute. Is Baker saying he’s next?
“I ain’t saying nothing,” Baker said, “but it’s a possibility.”
Responds Ben Schwartz,
What business does Dusty think people have at a ball game besides watching it? Dusty is unfair, because the fans did cheer the homer and the walks Latroy gave up in the 8th. Still, staying in line with Tribco management re the overly critical in Wrigelyville, it’s pretty obvious that the “boo birds” who sat in the rain for hours and stayed through an extra innings game past midnight CST are probably not “true” Cub fans.