So, according to the recap of the Game 2 first-round playoff clincher Monday night in Waynesboro that appeared in the Tuesday Daily News-Record, there was an issue with “some idiot … yelling obscenities across the field.”
The quote was attributed to Harrisonburg Turks manager Bobby Wease, who added, according to the paper, “How classless is that? That’s classless.”
As Paul Harvey so often said, “And now, the rest of the story.”
I was on the field after the game getting video of the postgame celebration with Waynesboro Generals players and coaches following the thrilling 4-3 Generals win that came on a walkoff two-run, two-out single by Kevin Fagan. I was with the team gathered just beyond third base in the grass in short left field when I heard a commotion coming from the Turks dugout.
The commotion was a volley of obscenities coming from the dugout directed at a group of Waynesboro fans, including small children, in a scene reminiscent of one from earlier in the 2013 season at another Harrisonburg-Waynesboro game at Linco Park at Kate Collins Field, on a night that ended with a similar volley of obscenities from the Turks dugout directed at fans and Waynesboro players and coaches.
“Classless,” indeed.
It’s a game, folks. And actually, Monday’s game was one of the better ones that I’ve ever seen. (Ever.) Great starting pitching, a late comeback by the favored Turks, ending with a walkoff hit that sent the regular-season champs home much earlier than expected.
Games like that are what Valley League Baseball should be all about. Instead, it’s about things like Wease brusquely turning his back on Waynesboro coach Mike Bocock during the exchange of lineup cards before the game, and the mysterious “Waynesboro supporter in sunglasses” who was blamed by the DNR for beginning a verbal altercation with Wease ostensibly at around the same time I heard the Turks dugout explode in its own R-rated chatter back across the diamond.
But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good yarn. For the sake of argument, we’ll go with the DNR account and agree that it was all on Waynesboro, where things are so rough and tumble that the situation required an on-duty police officer (for the record, there was also an on-duty police officer at Game 1 in Harrisonburg), and where the Harrisonburg squad was so shaken by its interaction with the man in sunglasses that the reporter had to catch up with Wease for his postgame interview as he was “quickly making his way to the Turks’ bus with his team.”
(The bus didn’t leave until nearly a half-hour after the game was over, so they must not have been in too much of a hurry.)
It’s a good story. It maybe doesn’t square with the facts, but what are facts these days, anyways?
Share
Contributors
