Off Their Rockers
Shea faithful strike out on decency
This is why you never want to take your kid to a baseball game. Five hundred extra police personnel, expecting the worst. Undercover security guards, roaming the joint. All the machismo, all the violent, nihilistic rubbish polluting the one place where children are supposed to feel safe.
Don't blame John Rocker for stirring up the dirt and muck of the cesspool that is Shea Stadium. He didn't start it. He didn't provoke that cretin into heaving a batting helmet at him. He didn't cause another lout to bruise him with a baseball.
You did that, or maybe it was the guy sitting next to you, or the man two rows down, the one with the 7-year-old mimicking his every word. And until you decide to stop laughing at or tolerating such terrifying, menacing bullies, the game of baseball in this city will continue to be a loser of a sporting event, no matter how successful the teams might be.
John Rocker acknowledges the Met fans' jeers before the game.
All Rocker did was call Mets fans what they are � stupid, vulgar idiots who have the manners of feral dogs. He didn't say all New Yorkers, but you wouldn't know there were any sane or civil ones left if you had been there last night, watching Rocker try to leave the field in Flushing after the Braves had beaten the Mets, 1-0, to take a 3-0 lead in the NLCS.
On the roof of both dugouts, their billy clubs resting prominently by their sides, were 40 of New York's Finest, ready and waiting for trouble. Rocker, the Atlanta closer with the Popeye arms, had mowed down the Mets, again, for another save, and now he was being pelted with plastic bottles, with change, with whatever these sauced-up heathens had left in their pockets. The soothing strains of Billy Joel's "New York State of Mind" blared across the speakers, creating a surreal setting drenched in sweat.
"They were all too drunk; they missed me," said Rocker, smiling. And then he got serious: "I don't think it's right to have armed policeman trying to protect us when we're trying to play the national pastime."
He's a 6-4 sculpture of muscular comic book juvenilia, his veins popping, his mouth yapping. When it comes to bare-knuckled confrontations, he can surely take care of himself. But he doesn't stand a chance against the batteries or shards of metal regularly flung at him and other ballplayers whenever their jobs take them to Shea.
"Out of all the stadiums across America, it's only here," he said.
Rocker mentioned the time last month when he was warming up with Gerald Williams near the Shea third base line and got hit in the leg with a ball thrown from the stands. Which was different, but no less disturbing, than that time when he was running in from the bullpen and someone tried to conk him with a helmet.
What is this scary tribunal mentality that possesses the denizens of Shea to want to harm someone whose only crime � besides being a wise-cracking good ol' southern boy from Macon, Ga. � is the ability to get Mets batters out at will? It's as if the fans are auditioning for a role in the "Fight Club."
So there was another troglodyte, screaming "Bobby Cox, you beat your wife," as the Braves manager walked onto the field. And a sign that paid homage to the Civil War: "1865-1999. When you hate you lose. We won a long time ago. Go home Rocker." And this: "John Rocker, one percent pitcher, 99 percent Jackass." It's a wonder they weren't drawn in crayon.
"Cheering is one thing, but here they say some of the most vulgar things, sexually explicit remarks about your mother, your sister," said Rocker. "Why should kids have to hear that? Why should we have to fear for our safety?"
Rocker is nothing like the other buttoned-up, all-work-no-fun Braves pitchers, and not just because he insists on eating a banana in the middle of every game. He sprints from the bullpen to the mound like Michael Johnson going for gold, releases primal screams after every out and talks as fast as the heat he throws.
"I don't have the attention span to go out there and concentrate much longer than 10 minutes," he said.
The last time the Braves had such an unassailable closer was in 1995, with Mark Wohlers. Then Wohlers forgot how to throw strikes, and his heir apparent, Kerry Ligtenberg, tore ligaments in his elbow during spring training, and suddenly there was this maniac, whipping up a storm.
Into the insanity he sprinted last night, wearing a John Elway grin, blue eyes rolling into the back of his head. After Benny Agbayani reached first on an error, Rocker got Todd Pratt swinging out of his shoes at a couple of sliders. Melvin Mora flied to right-center and Rey Ordonez hit into a force play, and Rocker let go a guttural yell to the heavens, which prompted garbage and catcalls.
"It's a good time just knowing you can get into people's heads, push their buttons," he said.
Rocker hasn't given up a run in the playoffs and the only worry, other than getting beaned by some idiot fan, is whether his hyper personality will cause him to flame out early.
"I don't think I can keep up this frantic pace," he had said before the game, from the safety of the dugout. "Hopefully I won't be living this way in my late 20s or I'll be a wreck. If I don't calm down I'll probably die young. Which might not be a bad thing."
And with that he excused himself like a proper gentleman and ran out of the dugout, away from the men in blue and into the teeming cauldron of hate. The words were vile and rude; Rocker merely smiled and tipped his hat to the fans. They should salute such grace under pressure, such manners.
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