The stench of disgrace that recently threatened the
great game of baseball actually began rising on opening
day. The location was fabled Yankee Stadium, the date
April 5th. It was during the changeover, just before
the top of the 8th inning, when an unhinged female hopped
the rail and bounded onto the field of play before the
eyes of 59,000 Yankee fans. Her motive? To accost star
shortstop Derek Jeter with her phone number, then sprint
to right field and escape capture.
This was the public's introduction to Kristielee Wilcox,
26, of Long Branch, New Jersey, a Manhattan shop girl,
a Derek Jeter fan, and as it turned out, just another
everyday, regular, estrogen-burning nut-job seeking
headlines and her proverbial 15 minutes of fame.
Wilcox intended to slip out of the stadium and eventually
back to her home. That's where she would wait by the
phone for the big league All-Star to dial the magic
numbers and transform her confused life into a whirlwind
of money, travel and hot-button celebrity sex.
Instead, the hare-brained adventure lasted no longer
than fifteen seconds and landed her in a whole new world
of trouble. Kristielee did her
waiting not by the phone, but sobering up with the refuse
of society inside a grimy cell in the Bronx jail. You
see, after dropping her mash note on the unfazed Jeter
and faking out one guard with a halfback move, Wilcox
was nabbed by security and led from the field to the
cheers of thousands.
How do I know so much about the predicament of Kristielee
Wilcox? Because I was sitting next to the now notorious
game-crasher at Yankee Stadium, way down in the third
base box seats. To state a fact, The Man on the Scene
was the last person to warn her against doing exactly
what she had been drunkenly blabbing about doing for
hours.
Wilcox
was a friend of a friend I met a week before opening
day. We converged again at "the bat" at Yankee
Stadium just after 1 pm, a group of us uniting several
minutes before the first pitch. Kristielee told me she
had been drinking since 11 am, had consumed several
beers, and was feeling quite a buzz. Pretty standard
stuff, or so I thought.
We entered the Bronx Zoo, the stadium crawling with
hardcore New York fans anxious to open the home season.
We grabbed some $8 beers and $6 hot dogs and found our
$55 box seats down the third base line close to the
field. We were basking in the glory of the springtime
sun for all of two minutes before Kristielee began running
her big mouth about how she wanted to go out onto the
field.
She said she was in love with the Yankee mystique.
And she always wanted to go on the field. She said it
was her destiny. She wanted to do this since she was
five years old, she said. She wanted to go on the field
to be part of a game, just one time. She talked a lot
of nonsense about the energy of the crowd and how there's
no day like today to do something.
I told her she was crazy. She was a little sloppy and
we had a few hours, so I told her a thing or two about
going on the field. I advised her that The Man on the
Scene has attended several hundred sporting events
and no one who has ever dared breach the sanctity of
the playing surface has ever escaped. They are always
caught and often greeted with a major league billy club
to the kidneys. I told her she'd certainly get the express
check-in at the gray bar hotel, in the Bronx of all
places, and that she'd definitely face a heavy fine.
She laughed me off, saying she could run fast, and that
they wouldn't catch her. I wasn't buying it. The Man
on the Scene ain't no rookie.
By the middle of the seventh inning, it seemed maybe
Kristielee had sobered up and returned to reality and
abandoned the ill conceived 'I'm gonna sprint on the
field' concept. She hadn't said a word to me about it
since I told her she would go to jail. But I wasn't
positive. In fact when she tried to leave our row just
before the top of the eighth inning, I refused to move.
I didn't trust her, I said. "You're gonna run on
the field."
She scoffed at me, hollering a profanity, then said
she was just going to talk to a friend a couple of rows
in front. The Man on the Scene made her
crawl over him to get out of the aisle, letting her
know I wasn't going for the old okey-doke. I knew damn
well what she was up to. A moment later I look down
the aisle and there's Kristielee but like she
said, she's only talking to someone. Maybe I over-reacted,
thinks the Man on the Scene. I return to my conversation
with some of the pinstripe mafiosi behind me.
That's when I hear the crowd noise erupt into the rafters,
people shouting, cheering, jeering. My head snaps back
to center in time to see the panty lines of Kristielee
Wilcox chugging like a 2-stroke engine across the infield
directly towards Derek Jeter.
Thirty
times I told her not to do this. Then the people in
the rows behind us begin to put it together. "Hey!
That's the girl who was with them! Holy shit! That's
the girl from that seat right there!" People were
laughing and razzing us. "Jeter! Jeter! Jeter!"
They begin chanting. There was no satisfaction in being
proven right when security pounced on her. Far from
it. For those in Kristielee's party, the stink of disgrace
was foul in the air. We felt disgusted. I was ashamed
that I knew her, the village idiot, the class clown.
Also let it be known that she wasn't met with warm
cheers by the sellout crowd at Yankee Stadium when she
was taken away no, they gave her what she deserved,
a good old fashioned Bronx-strength raspberry. Like
some obnoxious stalker chick that runs on the field
would ever have a shot at the stud captain of the biggest
team in sports. A sitting Democratic President, maybe,
but not Derek Jeter.
In short, sixty thousand New Yorkers were able to watch
a baseball game in a civil way and the person sitting
right next to me wasn't. In the annals
of crazy things crazed women do in public Farrah
Fawcett's drugged-out babbling on Letterman, Winona
Ryder's five-finger discount on Rodeo Drive, Anna Nicole
Smith's acting in "Skyscraper" this
was one for the books. Worse, it was a disgrace to the
legacy of Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle.
So I'm calling for an old-fashioned blackball. That's
right, a lifetime ban of Kristielee at Yankee Stadium.
It's about time someone does something in the best interests
of the game of baseball. Kristielee Wilcox is a public
nuisance and a security risk. It's time she gets the
special treatment she deserves.
The Yankees, led by their star shortstop
Derek Jeter, defeated the Tampa Bay Devil Rays that
fateful opening day, 4-0.
|