According to The Smoking Gun, a New York Yankees fan is seeking legal action against his favorite baseball team, the sports league, sports channel ESPN and a couple of commentators after he was caught sleeping on camera duringa live broadcast of the team's game against rival Boston Red Sox.
26 year-old Andrew Rector was present during the April 13 game when he had taken a nap during the widely televised match. ESPN, who had been broadcasting the match and had John Kruk and Dan Shulman providing commentary for the game, panned in on Rector who was clearly sleeping. Rector said in his lawsuit that Kruk and Shulman had made not nice comments towards him while he was asleep. Rector also gained notoriety after the match after the video of him titled "Tired fan naps in the stands" was subsequently published on YouTube and on the Major League Baseball's site.
The Smoking Gun observed that Rector's arguments were a flimsy and might not hold much water in court. The fan is asking $10 million in damages for the purported "unending verbal crusade" he received from the video.
"Announcers like Dan Shulman and John Kruck [sic] unleashed avalanche of disparaging words against the person of and concerning the plaintiff. These words, include but not limited to 'stupor, fatty, unintelligent, stupid' knowing and intending the same to be heard and listened to by millions of people all over the world."
Although the ESPN commentators made fun of him a bit, the duo's words were hardly disparaging, as they only said that Rector should not have slept in the ballpark and that he was oblivious to the game. Moreover, Rector's complaints are of of what he had received from online commenters, of which the defendants named in the lawsuit are not liable for.
There were additional allegations against the MLB that did not happen as Rector complained in his lawsuit. A couple of them read, "The defendant Major league Baseball continually repeated these vituperative utterances against the plaintiff on the major league baseball web site the next day. These words and its insinuations presented the plaintiff as symbol of anything but failure. The defendant MLB.Com continued the onslaught to a point of comparing the plaintiff to someone of a confused state of mind, disgusted disgruntled and unintelligent and probably intellectually bankrupt individual."
