How to handle lasers at ballgames

[Terry Lomax]

Philly fans reinforced their reputation as the worst city in terms of
horrible behavior. In front of a national audience, they regularly
pointed laser lights at the eyes of opposing batters Saturday. In
addition to distracting the players, the lights can cause blindness.

The proactive solution is to ban lasers and search for them at the
gate, but if fans are able to sneak them in, here's how to handle
them:

As soon as a light is detected, the umpires should immediately halt
play. The PA announcer then says the game will be a forfeit loss
unless the laser pointer is identified within two minutes. The
pointer can turn himself/herself in or nearby fans can alert security
to snitch on the bad fan. If the game is a forfeit and fans later
find out who possessed the lasers, security should let fans pummel the
fan(s) who caused the loss. Same with throwing batteries and other
inappropriate behavior.

With 14 runs and a blowout victory, yesterday's game would be an ideal
forfeit loss to show how inappropriate fan behavior can undo huge
amounts of effort by the team. By not forfeiting the game or
arresting the bad fans, the umps and security in Philly enabled the
bad behavior and encouraged future misconduct.

Because many sniper rifles have laser sights, any laser light should
be considered a possible sniper attack, with the fan pointing the
laser treated as a terrorist.

[MVSteve]

Since we Phils fans are so bad, under your rules, we would attend
Phillies road games and shine lasers on our own players, especially
when the Phils are down big and it's late in the game. Then we would
get forfeit wins! (And note that we do travel very well--at Nationals
games, there are generally more Phils fans than Nats fans.)

That's the problem with penalizing a home team for the actions of its
fans. Unless it's a case where _most_ of the stadium is doing
something bad (like that Dodgers game where the fans threw souvenir
balls onto the field), a forfeit risks punishing the home team for
something done by the visiting team's fans.

Of note, by the way, is the fact that of the 130 or so games forfeited
in baseball history, only one was caused by Phillies fans: a "pop
bottle barrage" in 1949. The Phillies won a game by forfeit in 1907
when Giants fans poured onto the field after they engaged in an
Opening Day snowball fight in NY and another by forfeit in 1889 when
Dodgers fans storned the field in Brooklyn--so NY fans have done it
twice as much to the Phillies as Phillies fans have done to NY teams.

Okay, I will admit that three forfeits were caused by Philadelphia A's
fans, in 1920 and 1906 (fans spilled onto the field) and 1918 (a
"barrage of seat cushions" from the second level caused the first
level fans to flood the field to get away). However, all of those
fans moved to Kansas City after the 1954 season, and we Philadelphia
fans have been remarkably well-behaved ever since then.

(Forfeit info compliments of Retrosheet--God bless Retrosheet!)

http://www.retrosheet.org/forfeits.htm

[Tarkus]

MVSteve wrote:
> Since we Phils fans are so bad, under your rules, we would attend
> Phillies road games and shine lasers on our own players, especially
> when the Phils are down big and it's late in the game. Then we would
> get forfeit wins! (And note that we do travel very well--at Nationals
> games, there are generally more Phils fans than Nats fans.)

A perfect example of why forfeiting games over fan behavior is pretty
much always a stupid idea.