MLB suspends and fines Angels’ Anthony Rendon for altercation with fan
Angels third baseman Anthony Rendon was suspended and fined an undisclosed amount by Major League Baseball on Monday for an incident with a fan after the team’s opening-night game. He will miss four games, beginning with the Angels’ game Monday night in Seattle
After the Angels’ loss to the Oakland Athletics on Thursday at Oakland Coliseum, Rendon was seen — in a video that was widely circulated the following day — grabbing the shirt of a fan in the stands and cursing at him as the team walked back to the clubhouse from the field.
Rendon elected to appeal his suspension and was in the lineup about three hours before the first pitch against the Mariners. MLB then reduced his suspension from five games to four.
By getting into an altercation with a fan, Anthony Rendon is proving to be a selfish millionaire who is not helping the Angels on and off the field.
On Friday, Rendon said that he could not comment on the incident with the fan because of the ongoing investigation.
“My emotions got the best of me,” Rendon told reporters in Seattle after the suspension was reduced. “I’m usually pretty good about interacting with fans … have fun with it. But the gentleman, we spoke on the phone, and we both apologized about what had happened. And so we’re both ready to move forward.
“I can’t be mad, right? I’m a fan of other sports. I like heckling too.”
In one video of the incident, Rendon could be heard asking the fan, “What did you say? ... Yeah, you called me a b—, huh?” The fan repeatedly shook his head and said “it wasn’t me” while his chest was pinned against the stadium railing as Rendon kept pulling his shirt.
Rendon responded, “Yeah, you did” several times before releasing the shirt, freeing the fan to pull back from the railing as Rendon took an open-handed swipe at the bill of the fan’s hat and said, “Get the f— out of here.”
Rendon said Monday that after he returned to the clubhouse Thursday and changed out of his jersey, he went back out to the stands to try to apologize, but the fan had left.
“He’s remorseful for everything that happened,” Angels manager Phil Nevin said Monday of Rendon. “This doesn’t at all change how I feel about him as a person. … He’s a great leader on our team and he has accepted responsibility as a good leader.”
This is the second time in two seasons that Rendon has been suspended. Last season, the league suspended him for five games for his involvement in a brawl with the Seattle Mariners while he was on the injured list recovering from wrist surgery.
The cause for Rendon’s suspension this season is not unprecedented, as the league has suspended players for incidents with fans.
In September 2004, the league suspended Frank Francisco of the Texas Rangers and Milton Bradley of the Dodgers for separate incidents with fans. Francisco received 16 games for throwing a folding chair into the crowd at Oakland Coliseum. The chair broke the nose of one fan. Bradley got a five-game suspension for throwing a plastic bottle into the stands and yelling expletives at fans.
Rendon’s agent, Scott Boras, told Times columnist Dylan Hernández that the league “needs to address stadium security” and “this is the only stadium in Major League Baseball where fans have access to players after games.” The Rangers manager at the time of Francisco’s incident in 2004, Buck Showalter — now the manager of the New York Mets — also pointed out the Coliseum’s security back then.
In August 2010, Nyjer Morgan of the Washington Nationals was suspended for throwing a baseball into the stands in Philadelphia, hitting a fan. His initial suspension was seven games, but after three additional incidents that occurred with other players in games with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Florida Marlins, and two appealed suspensions, he ended up serving eight games in September of that season.
MLB’s new rules against the defensive shift will make it very difficult for teams to stop Angels star Shohei Ohtani from excelling at the plate.
Last season, Tim Anderson of the Chicago White Sox and Amir Garrett of the Kansas City Royals were suspended for separate incidents; Anderson in April for directing a middle finger at a fan in Cleveland and Garrett in August for tossing a drink at a fan at Guaranteed Rate Field.
The Oakland Police Department is still investigating a battery that occurred at the ballpark seen on surveillance video on Thursday, but has never named Rendon. It also said that no victim has contacted the department.
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