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Blue Jays Fan Confesses to Throwing Peanut at Yankees Bullpen

Fan-made public service advertisement.
Fan-made public service advertisement.
Courtesy @BlueJaysChirps

Thanks to some investigative work by the Toronto Star's Brendan Kennedy (I guess it's not that often one could do it in sports), we have a confession from the fan who became the centrepiece in the Goon-gate scandal.

"It was just a peanut," said Josh Blair, 21, who was ejected from the game along with another fan, whom he didn’t know but had high-fived him on his way out. "(The peanut) didn’t even have the shell on it."

I must admit that it's not surprising that the fan actually did throw something into the bullpen and that the staff at Rogers Centre did not throw someone out just because they were innocently "chirping and heckling" as Justin Jackson, the fan who first reported the incident, tried to portray. Also, Blair said some crap about how he was trying to help the Blue Jays get back into the game, and somehow thought that throwing a peanut at the Yankees bullpen was the magic bullet. I hope that this incident can serve as a little reminder that we should all relax and wait for the full story to come out before reacting to it the way some folks on Twitter did after the post started circulating.

I have don't have proof in numbers, but I think it is a rather safe assumption that the median age of fans at the Rogers Centre has been decreasing lately. It is great to see younger folks get into baseball, but some of them will act quite immaturely at times. Sportsnet commentator Gregg Zaun and Twitterer @james_in_to think that the youth movement may have caused the increase in rowdiness at the ballpark (of course James points out that he doesn't think all youth act like that). Because there is lack of hard evidence, I don't know whether the increased appearance of unruly behaviour is due to an actual increase in bad behaviour, increased attendance, a shift in demographics, or that social media and smart phones have allowed more of us to report these incidents. It's probably a combination of all these factors.

Do you have any creative ideas of how to stop buffoonery in the stands?