I've never been to a Raiders game.
I've been to tons of Oakland games, and to many other parks.
In fact, one of the reasons I'm an Oakland fan is that growing up, my parents took me to San Francisco games. At the age of seven, I had a fan pour beer down my back.
The baseball crowd at Oakland is, in my experience, relatively well behaved. It's nowhere near as bad as San Francisco, and there's no rivalry matchup on the Oakland schedule that generates the press, emotions and fan ugliness of a Giants-Dodgers game.
At a baseball game, like at other major sporting events, that line between the field and the stands is sacred. Individual fans who throw objects on the field are ejected; those who jump on the field are jailed; when whole groups of fans do it, it causes a stink for at least a week, during which sports fans are forced to endure the penalty of sports columnists wasting ink on moralizing rather than entertaining them with sugar-coated stories of sports stars going on drinking binges and breaking 120 on the interstate.
If provoked, a player can climb into the stands and try to fight the heckler. We enjoy that, though it causes us all to suffer: the player suffers bodily injury and suspension, we as fans suffer an interruption to the game and a week of local columnists moralizing about sacred boundaries between the field and the stands.
But throwing a chair? Come on. And I'm sure the woman "merited it" because she's an A's fan, or her husband was Heckling? Or the Rangers came to town looking for a fight? I mean, Oakland laid on 10 extra cops to protect.
Watching the replay, it was a total cheap shot right out of the WWF. The Rangers clear the bench and get into it with the heckler. The cop comes over, backs away the rangers, then turns to deal with the disturbance. When his back his turned Francisco chucks the chair into the stands.
Yeah, Oakland fans deserved it. Collective guilt is a wonderful thing.
And sure, big fat out-of-court settlement. Heck, let's see: coach knows his team has a problem dealing with fans in this park; he asks for extra security. He locks down the locker room for 90 minutes before the game. I wonder what he said to the players during that period? Could it have anything to do with the fact that the entire Texas roster cleared the benches to confront a single heckler? The standard procedure for dealing with an unruly fan is to eject the person. If the stadium doesn't do it on its own policy terms, the visiting team can make a single phonecall and ask that the fan be ejected. It's not that hard. Why then did they clear the benches instead?
I think we better subpoena every Texas player that was there, along with half the stadium staff and the dozen or so cops within hearing distance of the Texas dugout and bullpen.
They'll settle, and they'll pay. And the heckler will transfer to the Blackhawk fire department..
