Alex Rodriguez will return to the Bronx on Friday night, when he is scheduled to put on a home Yankees uniform for the first time this season. How fans will react remains to be seen, but if Rodriguez is loudly jeered, that will fit right in with a tradition of scorching one of your own. Some examples of this phenomenon have been provided by staff writers for The New York Times who, years later, can still hear all those boos or, in one instance, the laughter.
Strife in Stripes
Yankees fans often booed pitcher Ed Whitson before they even saw him at a game. His name would be announced during lineup introductions in 1985 and 1986, and the Yankee Stadium grandstand would erupt with catcalls and jeers. Even on days when he did not pitch, the fans would boo if his face appeared on the video scoreboard as he sat in the dugout.
Ronald C. Modra/Sports Imagery, via Getty Images
Ed Whitson pitching at Yankee Stadium in 1986.
It got to be so bad that Whitson would not allow his family to attend Yankees games. He also started taking a circuitous route to his home in New Jersey because he insisted that some Yankees fans were following him in their cars after games. At least once, a fan driving alongside Whitson on the George Washington Bridge rolled down his window to heckle him.
Whitson had signed a big free-agent contract after the 1984 season to join the Yankees, but he lost six of his first seven decisions with the team. He received basketfuls of hate mail, even death threats. Fans threw things at him on the field — paper cups, coins and, once, a baseball glove.
Then Whitson got into a barroom brawl with his manager, the fan favorite Billy Martin. Whitson cracked a rib in the tussle, but Martin broke an arm. That did not help Whitson's popularity in New York.
Martin was let go after the 1985 season, and the Yankees tried rejuvenating Whitson by using him mostly on the road. But Whitson still wanted out. The Yankees mercifully traded him back to San Diego, in July 1986.
That brought Whitson to Shea Stadium periodically — where he was roundly booed. BILL PENNINGTON
Hurling Insults
Legions of Knicks fans might claim to have been inside Madison Square Garden on the infamous night that the court was showered with life-size posters of Patrick Ewing. Few would probably admit, in retrospect, to being part of the spectacle humiliating Ewing, a future Hall of Famer.
The announced crowd on March 17, 1987, was actually a paltry 10,241. Many of the fans booed Ewing and the Knicks as the Denver Nuggets closed out a 133-111 victory. Far too many turned their St. Patrick's Day souvenirs into projectiles while Ewing was struggling through an 11-point, 3-rebound performance.
One rolled-up poster fired with Scud-like accuracy landed between two reporters at the courtside press table as they were observing the uprising of a crowd once celebrated as basketball's most sophisticated. A particularly incensed fan suddenly appeared behind one baseline and proceeded to tear his poster to pieces.
While ball boys scurried around to collect the posters and Ewing watched in disbelief, the public-address announcer, John Condon, pleaded for restraint. "There are 10 excellent athletes on the floor," he said in his measured baritone, which had become synonymous with the Knicks.
Larry C. Morris/The New York Times
Attendants removing posters from the Madison Square Garden court in 1987.
The booing got even louder.
The Nuggets were not a good team, having lost 13 of their previous 17 games. The Knicks, though, were worse, an injury-racked, dispirited bunch that would fall 25 games under .500 that night and was on the way to getting its general manager, Scotty Stirling, fired. The Knicks' coach, Bob Hill, would also not return.
"I'm sorry for him it happened," Hill said afterward of Ewing. "There's so much pressure on him night in and night out. And all the help he's supposed to have is injured."
To further shame those who made Ewing the target of their ire and chanted for Eddie Lee Wilkins, the 12th man, to replace him, Ewing was playing with an aching left knee and would soon after be shut down for the remainder of the season. Ewing would miss Bernard King's return after nearly two inactive seasons following knee surgery, and the two would never play a minute together.
Mark Jackson was drafted that June to provide leadership at point guard, and Rick Pitino coached the Knicks into the playoffs the following season. The rehabilitation of Ewing's reputation as a franchise player could begin in earnest.
"That's life," he said on the night of the poster toss. The characteristic mask of indifference was only a defense. Ewing was hurt by the Garden fans' callous demonstration. He never fully trusted them afterward. HARVEY ARATON
Jabs at a Team's Head
Chicago Blackhawks fans were never that much different from any other fan base suffering through an epic championship drought, but they were distinct in the determined manner in which they picked a villain they could all rally against. Their target was William Wirtz, the team's owner and its president for more than 40 years.
Nicknamed Dollar Bill for his penny-pinching roster moves and his refusal to allow the team's home games to be shown on local television because he believed it hurt attendance, Wirtz became the one thing on which all Blackhawks fans could agree. They hated him. After all, their team had not won a Stanley Cup since 1961, and Wirtz, who became the team's president in 1966 and its owner in 1983, had presided over the departures of several popular players, including Phil Esposito, Bobby Hull, Denis Savard, Jeremy Roenick, Ed Belfour and Chris Chelios.
The fans' vitriol was so deep and so universal that when Wirtz died in 2007, booing fans nearly drowned out the team's pregame tribute to Wirtz at United Center.
Upon taking control of the Blackhawks after Wirtz's death, Rocky Wirtz, his son, immediately began allowing the team's home games on local television, and he swiftly undid much of his father's sour legacy. Chicago won a Stanley Cup in 2010 (and another in 2013). Still, mention William Wirtz's name to Blackhawks fans today, and they might boo all over again. LYNN ZINSER
Star-Spangled Brouhaha
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