Jai-alai Question of the Week


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Re(1): #346 - Shall we just throw the rabble out?

Posted on April 5, 2010 at 01:07:55 AM by 4decadepro

Throughout the seventies players had leeway to point out the most profane offenders and have them tossed. The general rule was they could heckle us and tell us we sucked, stank and were bums. If they yelled worse language or talked about your mother, father, family etc then the player told the players manager and security was called to escort them out. When the crowds were 12,000 to 15,000 I remember Juaristi and Asis probably having someone thrown out on a regular basis. It was probably the angriest I ever saw the nice and easy going Asis get pissed. Also at Miami once you were escorted out the fan was warned not to return. If the fan was heckling the player enough, laughing and taunting continuously, but not really saying anything foul or profane, then the player would get the last laugh by telling the players manager that the fan was saying profane things about his mother and the player would stand there in the players cage to make sure that the fan would know that the player had enjoyed watching the moment of the fan being ejected by security. This continued when Hartford opened and we went there to play and I will say that on average for the size of the crowd...a lot of people were ejected at Hartford the first 3 years I played there. I'm talking fans who would literally curse you profanely from the previous game and then wait for you to come out to warm up for the next game and start again. I never saw that take place in Miami like I did in Hartford. In the 80's I was playing in Ocala and WJA management told the players that fans would be warned once but not ejected as long as they stopped. That seemed to quell the diehards who were always the worst offenders but it was obvious that management was sending out the message to the players that they could no longer risk the possibility of tarnishing their images by continuously ejecting and banning fans while crowds were slowly diminishing. It seemed to start especially at Ocala where the largest crowds were Wed. night UF students and it was $1 beer and hot dog night. Management was leery of word spreading among students that Ocala was not a cool place to go.

BTW, regular boos and heckles never bothered me or most players but the worst thing that sticks in my mind was a student night at Ocala and one guy in a group of about 6 students yelled at me...Randy, your mother sucks donkey dicks. Him and his buddies were laughing and carrying on and thought it was hilarious. Security tossed all six out the door as I watched with pleasure. The rest of my night was nice and peaceful...bet those 6 guys remembered me!

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