MLB players are having to get used to playing games without fans, which involves some habits that usually make sense not really happening during the 2020 season. One of those is the practice of tossing baseballs into the stands at the end of a half inning so fans can take home a souvenir.
That hasn’t stopped Oakland Athletics third baseman Matt Chapman, who has made a game out of it for himself in which he tries to take out the cardboard cutouts that many teams have placed in seats in lieu of fans.
Matt Chapman says he HAS been aiming for cutouts when he tosses balls in the stands and he’s found them to be very durable. Mad in Seattle one day, he winged one hard at a cutout and didn’t dent it “so I got even more mad,” he says.
— Susan Slusser (@susanslusser) August 9, 2020
Those things are tough. We’ve seen that it takes a pretty good shot from a home run ball to even dent one of them.
Empty stadiums are a strange environment for players to be playing in. It explains why there have been amusing efforts to treat the cardboard cutout fans like they’re the real thing on more than one occasion.
