Alcohol, Matthew Clemmens, and Memories from a Little Girl

By now most of America has heard of Matthew Clemmens, the man who forced himself to vomit on an 1-year-old girl; then assaulted her father, an off duty police officer, at a Philadelphia Phillies game.  Clemmens, recently sentenced to three months in jail, 50 hours of community service, and two years of probation, is just another example in a disturbing trend in baseball fandom.    

A raucous crowd of Chicago Cubs fans poured beer on Dodgers backup catcher Chad Krueter in May 2000 and a riot behind the visitor’s bullpen nearly ensued.  In September 2002 Kansas City first base coach Tom Gamboa was attacked by a highly intoxicated father and son duo before teammates interjected.

These incidents only highlight a few of the encounters between baseball players and inebriated fans.  Even as these incidents become more common place in stadiums and ballparks across the country it only shows that Major League Baseball has clearly missed the issue.

Why was Clemmens, along with all the other inebriated “fans”, allowed to reach an absurd level of intoxication at a Major League Baseball game?

Team websites for the Yankees, Cardinals, and Mets, among others, have a written policy which allows management to discontinue the sale of alcohol to drunk and disorderly fans – yet, it is noticeably absent among many team sites – including the Phillies.

It may be team policy but why is it not written clearly on EVERY team site?

It’s safe to assume that the alcohol level that would allow a person to forcibly vomit on another human being – let alone an 11-year-old girl – would greatly surpass any states legal limit.  Why was Clemmens not cut off before he ever approached this level of stupidity?

Major League Baseball, having spent millions of dollars to clean up the tainted image left by performance enhancers, remains conspicuously quiet on this topic.

 Baseball needs to develop a better policy then allowing beer vendors to make a decision when a fan has approached a significant level of drunkenness.  Vendors, after all, make tips from paying customers and drunken customers have been known to be loose with their money.   

Baseball, more than any other major sport, has tried to create a family oriented environment but may have lost one 11-year-old fan permanently.  For now the dust has settled on the last drunken incident and the image has been pushed to the depths of the American subconscious.  Matthew Clemmens is locked in jail; his family has stopped sobbing.  All that remains is a traumatized little girl and the memory of one Phillies game with her daddy.