Cliff Lee Still Interested In Yankees, Despite Yankees Fans

A stadium attendant picks up bottles thrown on the field during game 3 of the ALCS

We don't know if anyone ever told you, but sports fans are assholes. Which is fine when someone makes the unforgivable mistake of wearing a Red Sox hat in the bleachers of Yankee Stadium, but not when the target of the drunken mockery is the wife of a player the Yankees are trying to sign.

Cliff Lee, who helped lead Texas to victory over the Yankees in the ALCS, will become a free agent at the end of the season and the Yankees are seriously considering trying to sign him (again). But during the ALCS series in New York, Yankees fans were jeering Lee's wife, Kristen, spitting and throwing beer at her (the way they did with the Rangers' bullpen!). She said, "The fans did not do good things in my heart. When people are staring at you, and saying horrible things, it's hard not to take it personal."

However, Cliff Lee says their behavior isn't going to color his feelings about becoming a Yankee. "I brush that off as fans being fans. You can't control 50,000 people and what they're going to do," he said. "There were some people that were spitting off the balcony on the family section and things like that, and that's kind of weak, but what can you do?" He added that though his wife was rattled, Lee said the incident didn't affect his wife's view of New York. "Her experience in New York is certainly a non-issue. She enjoys New York as much as anyone enjoys New York." If it makes her feel any better, at least these Yankees fans didn't get violent.

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By Jaya Saxena in News on October 27, 2010 10:45 AM

Comments [rss]

Ronnie Dobbs

Whenever an asshole Yankees fan, or Phillies fan, or Jets fan, or any other east coast douchebag fan gets some press, the standard response is that "sports fans are assholes."

No, sports fans on the east coast are assholes. In other places, like the Midwest, people know how to act like adults. I've been to sporting events all over the country. Fans on the east coast are beyond the pale in terms of bad behavior.

ANGRYGOD11

Yes, the ever polite Midwest.

Where drunken idiots attacked the Kansas City Royals first base coach. Or do you not consider Kansas City nor Chicago in the Midwest? Or the maybe I'm thinking of the riots in Chicago when the Bulls won or the riots when Detroit won the World Series or when the manager of the Twins had to go out on the field of the Metrodome to beg the fans to stop throwing garbage onto the field (and have the game called for the Yankees for security) or maybe nickel beer night in Cleveland, etc.

Midwest thinks their crap doesn't stink, but the reality is you just have a lot more corn to hide it.