Braves Outfielder Chase d'Arnaud Kisses Fan On The Neck After Interfering With Play
This move came from out of left field, huh! Get it?! He’s a left fielder!! No, but really. I didn’t see that one coming. The neck kiss is a new one for me. But honestly, I get it. I really do. A lot of fans were drawing comparison to the Steve Bartman play on this one, but you couldn’t be more wrong on that. On the Bartman play — which should’ve been ruled fan interference, but wasn’t — Bartman reached over into the field of play, and brought the ball back into the stands, preventing Moises Alou from making the play. The umpires ruled that the ball was in the stands, therefore it was NOT fan interference, and Luis Castillo was able to continue his at-bat. Side note: Wow, two Luis Castillo references in one day here in 2016. Big day for him.
Anyway, the at-bat was allowed to continue, Castillo walks on the next pitch, and the Marlins go on to score 8 runs that inning, win the game 8-3, then the pennant the next night. Sorry, Cubs fans, for that trip down memory lane. My intent was not to torture you. On THIS particular play with d’Arnaud, what should’ve happened on the Bartman play actually happened on the neck kiss play. Fan interference, and the batter is automatically out. Would d’Arnaud have actually caught that ball? Eh, not sure. It was certainly not an impossible catch, but it was far from an automatic out. Let’s go ahead and call it a gift out, thus resulting in a neck guess, and not an Alou-like freakout, with the fan having to go into witness protection for the rest of their existence.
PS – If and when the Cubs win the World Series, Steve Bartman throwing out a first pitch at Wrigley is going to be an all-time great baseball moment, not just an all-time great Cubs moment.