Party Crashers: Don’t Stop By, Anytime

The price of a ticket entitles fans to watch the game, not participate in it. Once, that might have been sufficient. In the age of Virtual Reality, it seems not to be.

We live in a strange time, a time when athletes are liable to be visited by fans anytime, anyplace, with or without invitations, some of them not exactly friendly. Call it the age of anything goes.

While Andy Warhol’s promised 15 minutes of fame is fine, 15 seconds of imposing on the action is not.

When Evander Holyfield, busy trying to win back the heavyweight championship of the world from Riddick Bowe, saw an uninvited guest drop out of the sky into the ring ropes at Caesars Palace, his eyes opened wide as saucers and all manner of things popped into his head.

“I thought about the tennis lady,” said Holyfield, recalling how Monica Seles was stabbed during a match in Hamburg last April.

A natural reaction.

What Holyfield should have done was walk over to James Miller, who calls himself “Fan Man,” picked his way through the parachute until he found a chin, and smacked him. Hey, if you want to get in the ring with the fighters, that’s fine. Just be prepared to join in the business at hand--or, in this case, fist.

That was linebacker Mike Curtis’ solution 22 years ago when a fan decided with three minutes to go in a game between the Miami Dolphins and Baltimore Colts that he simply had to have the game ball. You know, a souvenir of his visit to a real, live NFL game.

Don Ennis, who insisted he was stone sober at the time, had a simple explanation: “I just thought, ‘Gee, I sure would like the game ball,’ and simply decided to go after it. I made up my mind and figured I’d just go ahead and do it.”

Curtis, an All-Pro whose football training taught him to take a direct route at ball carriers and arrive in ill humor, went into overdrive. People who show up on football fields are subject to tackling. Curtis tackled Ennis.

“We were trying to win a football game, trying to get to the playoffs and this guy shows up on the field,” Curtis said. “My intention was to get him out of there as quick as possible. Usually they run around for 15 or 20 minutes and you can lose concentration and momentum.

“I gave the guy a forearm, the ball popped into the referee’s arms and we went back to the game.”

Curtis called the fan intrusion a nuisance. “If somebody busts into my office uninvited, it’s trespassing,” he said. “Just because it’s a stadium, that’s no different.”

Dr. Terry Whiteside, a psychologist at Middle Tennessee State University, thought Curtis had the right solution. “He handled it perfectly,” Whiteside said. “He cold-cocked the guy.

“These people feel really insignificant. Here’s a chance to be part of something big, to upstage it. There’s a sense of power and control. All of a sudden, they can make themselves the equal of a star athlete.

“Think about it. How can we impact the Super Bowl? We can crash the party and draw attention to ourselves. It’s a sense of power to someone suffering from a feeling of inadequacy. They want to be part of the show, maybe mess up the show of this rich, elite class of athletes.”

Sometimes, the interlopers come on a mission. In 1961, with Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris chasing Babe Ruth’s home run record, the Cleveland Indians arrived in New York for a doubleheader. Center fielder Jim Piersall, never reticent about such matters, announced that the Mantle-Maris watch would be futile against the Indians. “I said we were going to walk them every time,” he recalled.

After Mantle walked for about the seventh or eighth time in a Sunday doubleheader, two defenders of Yankee glory decided to discuss the matter with Piersall in the outfield. “They were a couple of idiots, maybe 21 or 22 years old,” Piersall said. “One came right at me and I decked him. Then I kicked the other one in the butt. You know how sometimes, when you try to kick somebody, you miss? I didn’t miss. I looked like the guy who punts for the Redskins. I hurt my foot.”

In short order, visitors were set upon by the grounds crew and a posse of other players, including Mantle. And that, as they say, was that.

Piersall said that for a fleeting moment, he wondered about things like a knife or a razor, but he had no choice in the matter except to confront the pair. “They came right at me,” he said. “Where was I going to go? They didn’t scare me. I was a street kid. I was in the Boys Club. I could fight a little. I was well protected.”

Things have changed and Piersall has noticed. “It’s getting scary,” he said. “Today, they might have a gun. There are 300 million people out there now with a lot of time on their hands. You don’t know what they might do.

“It used to be you could leave the garage door up. Now, you can’t. Now, they might take the garage door with them.”