By 
Shane Victorino got hit by a cup of beer making a play on a ball in Wrigley Field last week. This should not happen. At times, I’ll look to our European brothers and sisters as groups of people who may do things a little more proper than we do in North America, but in this case, we want to use their mistakes as an example we shouldn’t follow. These acts of this hooliganism happen all the time in Europe: flares, batteries, and coins often make their way down from the crowd on to the playing field. This isn’t the year 500 A.D. We should be able to act civilly without trying to injure or physically harm athletes in anyway. Fans do not have a right to throw objects or hit players – that is something which needs to be taken out of the sporting playbook immediately. If an example is made of Joey Macchione, I don’t think that would be a bad thing at all. Macchione joined WGN with Dave Kaplan to discuss if the throw was planned, what he would say to Victorino, the incident which transpired with the police, and why he turned himself in.
Was this planned?
“There was really no thought behind it whatsoever. If there had been a second of thought, obviously, I wouldn’t have done it. It was just a spur of the moment impulse. I stood up, it was a grand slam coming right at me and it ends up being a couple yards short. It was just a spur of the moment, split second decision, impulse, whatever you want to call it. There’s no way to pinpoint exactly what was going through my mind at the time, but obviously it was a mistake and a bad decision.”
When the police took away his cousin instead of him:
“Not that I got away with it because security came flying past me and another came from the other side and grabbed Dan. In the video, you can’t hear it but I’m kind of pointing at and trying to tell them, ‘It’s not him, it’s not him, it’s not him.’ I didn’t admit it myself but I tried saying ‘It wasn’t him, it wasn’t him.”’ Some say I snuck out of that stadium, some say I returned back to my seat, but I was just with my friends and we went down to get him out of holding and then we left.”
When he realized how big the story had become:
“My phone was going off, Facebook of course. I look on there and next thing you know I’ve got thousands and thousands of messages and all sorts of things going on. My friends calling me saying, “Oh my god, you’ve got to check this out.” Honestly, as the day went on, it just periodically got worse and worse and worse. Eventually it was just like, “I have to turn myself in. There’s no use trying to hide from this right now.”
On his statement:
“Honestly, I was almost forced into making that statement. Not forced, I shouldn’t say, but situations arose and making that statement was my best option at the moment.”
What he would say to Victorino and to the Cubs?
“I would apologize sincerely multiple times. I have nothing but respect for Shane Victorino. I would love to apologize to him, whether it be through the media or whatnot, it doesn’t matter. Nothing but respect, and I wish him nothing but luck for the season and for the rest of his career. I have no disrespect for him whatsoever and I hadn’t planned for this to happen.”
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