Astros Dallas Keuchel addresses a heckler with a signed baseball
By Mike Marteny
Things can get messy when professional athletes go on the road. The fans usually give them grief. Some more so than others.
Thankfully the days of Philadelphia fans throwing D-cell batteries at opposing players seems to be over. The verbal abuse is much more common these days.
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Part of being a professional is tuning it out, but sometimes the players have enough. They are human, after all.
This season, it seems that baseball players have found a way to respond to the hecklers without going all Ty Cobb on them.
They write a message on a baseball, and toss it to the heckler.
Brandon Phillips was the first to do so this season. After a rain delay in Pittsburgh, the crowd had thinned out, so the heckler could be heard loud and clear. So Phillips wrote him a message on the ball that said “Dear Drunk Guy, thank you 4 all the love and support. Now take this ball and shut the phuck up!” Phillips signed it with a smiley, and even posed for a selfie with the heckler.
Dallas Keuchel was the most recent player to respond to such a heckler.
He didn’t do as much with the interaction as Phillips did, but he certainly got his point across! The heart and his number were a nice touch!