There Are Just Somethings You Just Don't Do...

Sometimes I just don't get us as humans. We say stupid things, we don't care about each other as a whole and we act like we are better than everyone else. Why? I understand that if we don't look out for ourselves, who will but there has to come a point when we need to step back and think about what we are doing.

Case in point. During last night Yankees/Red Sox game (and I don't mean the Michael Pineda incident. I have been hearing about it all day), Xander Bogaerts of the Red Sox flipped a ball toward a young man in the stands. Check out what happens.

Really? Really? Dude, you couldn't let the kid have the ball? That gesture would have meant the world to the boy and your selfishness ruined the experience for him. Oh, you wanted a baseball that you could have gotten at a sporting goods store for 15.00? Well, why didn't you say so? That makes all the difference then.

And this isn't the first time I have seen such lousy behavior from adults at a baseball game either. Check out the behavior of these fine upstanding citizens:

It's things like this that make me pray that they trip over the steps on the way out of the stadium.

 I don't understand it. You have to know that there is a young kid right next to you that the ball was obviously tossed to. I understand that you might have lost your manners in the thrill of seeing that baseball come toward you, but if you see a sad kid next to you, just be a sport and make the kid happy. There is nothing special about a foul ball or a ball that was tossed in the stands by a coach, bat boy, the 3rd short stop or umpire.

In the video from last night's ball game, you clearly see the guy who stole that baseball look in the kids direction after he caught the ball, so you have to figure he knew what he did. The couple in Texas that claim they knew nothing, I'm not buying it. The kid is crying right next to them. And that dude in Florida ran away as soon as he caught the ball.

I'm not going to sit here and say I never got in a shoving match for a ball. But that's with adults who tried to push me out of the way when a ball came near me. Your competitive juices start to flow and it's on like Donkey Kong and I usually win those shoving matches.

However, I always look around to see if there was a kid in the scrum. I would much rather hand off the ball to a kid that tried to get the ball than keep it myself. I know when I was at a young age, catching a ball meant everything to me. It never happened, but if I could make a child's visit to a baseball park memorable and all it took was to give up the baseball, then I'm all for it. I've done it before and will always do it. It's just the right thing to do. Especially if you caught multiple balls. Keeping one is fine, but do you really need 3 or 4? Make believe you're the Santa Claus of baseball and start handing baseballs off.

But, for every overbearing adult I see that tries to get a ball, I see things like this that make me reaffirm my belief in mankind.

Too bad some adults just don't have the manners that Ian obviously has.