The Padres and Dodgers have a nice little rivalry going on. After this weekend's three-game series, in which San Diego took two games, the teams are tied at the top of the NL West division with identical 74-57 records. After scoring two combined runs in the first two games of the series, the Dodgers treated Sunday's finale as a palate cleanser. Four dingers, and six strong innings from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, added up to an 8-2 road victory which was punctuated by Shohei Ohtani using his 45th homer of the season to stunt on a local rascal.
A man in a Fernando Tatis Jr. jersey, seated right next to the Dodgers dugout, spent the entire game heckling Ohtani. You can understand how temptation can lead a man to do such a thing: His team had spent the previous two games silencing the Dodgers' offense (Ohtani was 0-for-7 coming into Sunday's game) and establishing themselves as the new captains of the NL West. And he had such a good seat! So close to the dugout that he could have feasibly had a quiet conversation with Dave Roberts about his favorite television shows. Why not get a little caught up in the moment? Why not heckle the best baseball player on the planet? Give him a little of the old business! A little ribbing! What's the worst that could happen?
Well, this could happen:
In general, heckling is an exhausting practice carried out by weird guys whose only service to the game is annoying the hell out of everyone else sitting in their section. I suppose, however, in this age where an increasingly common interaction between fans and athletes is the former sending an Instagram DM death threat to the latter's whole family over a blown gambling parlay, old-fashioned heckling is downright charming in comparison. In this case, we have something like a best-case scenario. A guy committed himself to heckling the coolest ballplayer in the universe, and apparently was not-vile enough in the process to elicit the coolest possible response. Everyone ends up winning: The guy has an incredible story to tell for the rest of his life, Ohtani gains yet another signature highlight, and the rest of us get to cling onto this rare flash of swagger and personality from the big fella.
The heckler's friends and family should still spend at least a week mercilessly making fun of him for this, though. You got owned on TV, sir! Everyone saw it!
