What happens when an outfielder and a heckler meet in right field?

The Jacksonville Suns opened the 2014 Southern League season with
a 3-1 victory over Huntsville. (Photo by Will Brown)

By Will Brown

Few things elicit more optimism than Opening Day. A player’s slate is wiped clean, a fan’s hope has yet to be extinguished and the jokesters among us have spent all winter waiting to unleash their best.

That was all on display Thursday night when the Jacksonville Suns opened the 2014 season against Huntsville.

The Suns went on to win the game 3-1 after starting pitcher, and top Miami Marlins prospect, Anthony DeSclafani allowed one run on two hits in six innings.

As fascinating as the action may have been on the field, one person’s one-sided conversations with Huntsville outfielder Mitchell Haniger may have been just as captivating.

Mitch Haniger
(Courtesy Huntsville Stars)

Haniger is the No. 3 prospect in the Milwaukee Brewers organization. He’s a 23-year-old right-handed outfielder from California who spent Thursday night adjusting to life in AA baseball. 

More than 7,500 people came to Bragan Field Thursday night, which is probably bigger than anything Haniger saw while playing for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers and Brevard County Manatees in A ball the last two years.

Nonetheless, this fanatic, in particular, was in midseason form. He was a stationed in the first row of the bleachers in right field, bearded, appeared to be in his 20s and wore a gray and black Suns hat like so many others — myself included — on Opening Night.

The fan made it his mission to heckle Haniger every time he took his station in right field. From the warm up tosses before the second inning to his anticipation for a delivered pitch, the fan rode Haniger as though the season depended on it.  

The Huntsville outfielder made the first of his two putouts in the second inning. Two innings later the Californian showed why some scouts say he has the best outfield arm in his organization.

DeSclafani hit a liner to right field for what he thought was his fourth career single in 22 career minor league at-bats in the home fourth. Haniger fielded the ball, took a crow hop and fired a dart to first base to beat DeSclafani, earn oooohs from the crowd and quiet his heckler…momentarily.

When Haniger fired, a group of us wondered what one local sportscaster would say when he heard a player was thrown out at first base on a ball hit well into the outfield. While we kibitzed, the in-form fan was keeping his verbal volleying in reserve for the later innings.

Jacksonville took a 2-1 lead into the bottom of the eighth inning. Our fan, recovered from the sting of watching Haniger show off his howitzer, to razz him unmercifully. There was whistling, noisemaking and trash talk. The grief-giving rose in volume when the Suns pushed across an insurance run.

When the Suns grounded out to short to end the home eighth, Haniger sprinted toward the dugout faster than any other frame all night. We joked it was because he wanted nothing more with our heckler. In truth, it was because he led off the ninth inning.

Haniger flew out to center to finish 0-for-3 on the night. The heckler, feeling he did his job, kept quiet for the final two batters and the Suns won their home opener for the third straight year.

Afterward, Haniger and his teammates trudged back to the visitor’s dugout, undoubtedly understanding that while hope may spring eternal, it’s not as everlasting as the jabs from the cheap seats.

Laughs and liveliness,
-Wb

At what price do we watch football?

The Dallas Cowboys have hosted a football game on Thanksgiving Day every year since 1966.
This is a photo fromthe Cowboys' 20-19 victory over Miami in 2011. (Photo By Will Brown)

By Will Brown

A lot of people watch football and eat on Thanksgiving. What made this particular Thanksgiving surreal was that the football game was witnessed in person and the meal was with one of the gladiators who put their body on the line that afternoon.

On the drive back from the game someone in the car asked a hypothetical question about how large the gladiator’s next contract should be.

The four mortals in the car had varying answers. Since, I was the person who worked in sports my response, which was nothing more than platitudes and probabilities, was believed to carry the most weight.

Then the gladiator mentioned his price. We all agreed to keep that figure in the car.

Four months later, I was sitting at my desk writing and researching when a colleague swung around to tell me how much money was being thrown at the gladiator. The contract on the table far surpassed the years and dollars discussed on our post game drive.

Thirteen months later the athlete in question was out of football. Repeated injuries made him replaceable.

The game extracted its pound of flesh and he decided the punishment was not worth a lifetime of limitations.

This spring dozens of football players will have seven or eight figures thrown at them to play a child’s game. A writer for Grantland.com estimated more than $1 billion has been doled out by NFL teams since the free agency period opened on March 11.

Most of us will look at the monopoly money being thrown at mostly twentysomthings and wonder why on earth anyone would complain about that lifestyle.

Here’s why. Less than 40 percent of the money thrown around this week in NFL contracts is “guaranteed. “Our gladiator said it’s rare that a player fulfills his entire contract in the NFL. Even the so-called “guaranteed” money is far from that as there is language in most contracts that prevents it from being guaranteed.

Think about this.

NFL franchises are worth more than other North American sports franchises. Its annual television revenue ($3 billion) is greater than the combined television revenue of the NBA, Major League Baseball and National Hockey League.

Football players make less on average than their professional counterparts, have the lowest minimum salary and it’s the only sport where the contracts are not completely guaranteed.

By the way, professional football is the most violent sport of the bunch. The NFL’s own website stated there were 57 anterior cruciate ligament injuries, 133 medial collateral ligament injuries and 228 diagnosed concussions during the 2013 season.

If you think this month’s spending spree in the NFL does not have a thing to do with you, think again.

If you have ESPN $13.68 of your cable bill goes directly to the National Football League every year. If you live in a city with one of the 32 franchises chances are your local tax dollars have funded stadium improvements, whether you like it or not. If you have other interests, they are frequently dismissed in water cooler conversations because football is omnipotent in American culture.

Those who own the 32 teams continue to mint money. Meanwhile, published reports found that those, who give their bodies, brains and sometimes more, find themselves paupers within years of graduating from a child’s game to men with less glamorous lives.

Football’s zeitgeist will focus on those who cashed in. But the fleeting dollars of free agency always require an older, broken-down body to be sacrificed so a younger, healthier replacement can call the Brink’s truck and a Realtor.

Our gladiator did not suffer that fate. He was too smart for that. He was wise enough to understand football was a means to an end, not endless means.

He traded the debasement, decadence and destruction of the game for doting on his daughter. The armor he once wore and the prizes he once won are tucked away. He is someone who used football’s relentless arms race to transition from a gladiator to just another guy.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb