Baseball Fan Busted Napping Sues ESPN

Andrew Rector also suing Yankees, MLB, 2 announcers for defamation
By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 8, 2014 5:55 AM CDT
Updated Jul 8, 2014 7:30 AM CDT

There's no napping in baseball. When 26-year-old Yankees fan Andrew Rector fell asleep during a game against the Red Sox on April 13, an ESPN cameraman lingered on his snoozing face and two announcers launched into a diatribe that included the words "stupor, stupid, fatty, and unintelligent"—that according to a $10 million lawsuit Rector filed last Thursday against the Yankees, Major League Baseball, ESPN, and the two announcers, John Kruk and Dan Shulman, claiming defamation and "intentional infliction of emotional distress," reports Courthouse News Service. The New York Times points out that Shulman and Kruk said no such words in the clip (Shulman did, however, call him "oblivious"), though it's unclear whether they commented on the 4th-inning nap later.

Rector's complaint is filled with misspellings and odd turns of phrases (Courthouse News calls the writing style "idiosyncratic"). An example, from paragraph 14, published on The Smoking Gun: "John Kruck [sic] in his verbal attack insinuated that the plaintiff is an individual that know neither history nor understood the beauty or rivalry between Boston Red Sox and New York Yankee." In his suit, Rector argues that the defendants presented false facts about him, including, "Plaintiff is not worthy to be fan of the New York Yankee," and, more colorfully, "Plaintiff is a fatty cow that need two seats at all time and represent symbol of failure." Rector's mother tells the Times the aftermath has been so bad he's had to miss work. (Another colorful NYC suit: A man in May sued for every penny on Earth, and then some.)

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