Well, ruined it if you were a Red Sox fan. Yankees fans probably dug it.
It happened 20 years ago today, and Chris Jaffe of The Hardball Times gives us the blow-by-blow. The upshot: after Mike Greenwell caught what should have been the 27th out securing a Red Sox win, the umpires told everyone that they had to do it all over again due to the fact that a drunken Yankees fan had ran out onto the field just as the pitch was being delivered. Even though the pitcher, batter and the fielders had gone ahead with the play, time had been called so the fly out didn’t count. With one more out and new life, the Yankees rallied.
This was 1993, of course, and in 1993 a late September Yankees-Red Sox game didn’t much matter. And of course barely anyone had the Internet yet and there certainly was no Twitter, Facebook, blogs or that many well-trafficked message boards on which people could register their collective outrage and/or glee.
I can only imagine if something like that happened today. The fan would be a celebrity. Everyone and their brother would offer their takes on what this means for the Republic and stuff like that. People would argue and fight and names would be called which could never be taken back.
In short, it would be glorious.
