Major League Baseball announced on Friday evening that Pittsburgh Pirates relief pitcher Dennis Santana has been suspended four games after video surfaced of him in an altercation with a fan at Comerica Park in Detroit on Thursday night. The incident happened late in the Pirates’ 8-4 win over the Tigers.
Multiple fan videos showed Santana aggressively swinging at a fan — who appeared to be a Pirates fan — seated directly above the team’s bullpen, before finally being restrained by members of the coaching staff and bullpen.
Santana was asked about the incident after the game, but would not go into any detail as to what the fan said to spark that reaction. He only said that the fan “crossed the line” multiple times and that he had never had anything like that happen in his big league career.
Professional athletes hear a lot of heckling, and that is especially true for relief pitchers positioned directly below fans in the bullpen. It takes a lot to get them to react. So it is entirely reasonable to believe that Santana is telling the truth that the fan said something way over the line, and perhaps repeatedly, to get that sort of reaction.
But Major League Baseball is still not going to take these things lightly and is always going to draw a bold line in the sand when it comes to player and fan interactions. You just can’t go after the paying customers. If they say or do something that is over the line, there is security in the stadium to handle it and remove them from the situation. The league is never going to be OK with players taking matters into their own hands.
That is not only for the safety of people in the stands, but also for the safety of the players themselves.
