What a difference a couple of days make. From the New York Times’ Jack Curry.
Mariano Rivera smiled, laughed and tipped his cap to the Red Sox fans when they sarcastically cheered his introduction at Fenway Park on Monday. Rivera recognized the humor in the greeting, which stemmed from his failures against Boston, and he chuckled at the display.
But to Rivera, once was enough. Rivera was not amused when the same fans repeated their mock cheers for him on Wednesday night when he entered the game in the bottom of the ninth to protect a 5-2 Yankees lead.
“It gets ridiculous at a point,” Rivera said. “Being sarcastic, you can take it for a little bit, but it gets old. It gets idiotic.”
When Rivera was reminded that Red Sox fans would probably continue cheering his arrival in the eighth or ninth inning, he vowed: “They won’t do it for too long, though. I will give you that.”
As confident as Rivera is, he is usually mild mannered with his comments and rarely utters anything to incite an opponent or another team’s fans. Still, Rivera, who is perhaps the best reliever in baseball history, was irritated that the fans here would be cocky enough to root for his appearance late in a game.
Yeah, that should do it. Now that Rivera has publicly expressed his annoyance with Boston fans, they are certain to lay off. Or to paraphrse Michael Kay, would they dare mock Sinatra for hitting a bum note?
I guess if Pedro can deal with Yankees fans chanting “Whose your daddy?” Rivera was only asking for the same.
As to the Sheffield incident, the post-game “gee we just dodged a bullet here folks” breathlessness from Chris Berman was ridiculous. The slo-mo repeats of it, shocked eye witness ESPN correspondents (“We were standing on the first base line when suddenly …”), and somber Awaiting Word from The President seriousness made me appreciate the days when idiot fans were intentionally NOT put on camera so as not to encourage them, whereas this thing got rerun endlessly. The last inning with the Yankees threatening was great, but totally overlooked for this non-incident. It sucks Sheffield got slugged (so he says), but the fan was ejected by a pretty fast reacting Boston security guard.