Houston Astros manager A.J. Hinch expressed before Thursday’s Game 4 of the American League Championship Series that he will pull his players off the field if fans at Yankee Stadium throw objects at his players.
Astros right fielder Josh Reddick said he had baseballs, water bottles and other objects thrown at him during Tuesday’s Game 3 when Houston posted a 4-1 win over the New York Yankees to take a 2-1 lead in the series.
“I will pull the team off the field if we get in that situation again where bottles are being thrown and balls are being thrown and it becomes unruly,” Hinch said Thursday. “There’s other ways to support your home team, and this place does as good a job as anybody to trying to police that while also trying to create an environment that’s all pro-Yankees.
“It would be a very ugly scene for baseball, a very ugly scene for the Yankees, if one of our guys was hit by something from the upper deck. Something tragic could happen and nobody wants that.”
Hinch said he went out to discuss his concerns with the umpiring crew during Game 3.
“I went out on the field the other day, I wanted the umpires to know that it was becoming a dangerous situation,” Hinch said. “Our guys have reported both in the bullpen and in the outfield, you could see the stuff thrown on the field. There’s no place for that. Both teams will agree. And it’s really hard to stop fans from doing that. But it’s also very dangerous. MLB is aware. We’re aware.”
Reddick homered in the second inning of Tuesday’s game and was greeted with large amounts of verbal abuse.
“You’re used to that for nine innings. Pretty standard,” Reddick said of the comments. “They’re all yelling at the same time, so it all kind of mumbles together.”
But Reddick doesn’t have any patience for the thrown items that come his way.
“You throw a baseball hard enough and hit somebody in the head when they’re not looking, it could do some damage to the player, so it’s definitely disrespectful and at the same time very unsafe,” Reddick said.
