The Houston Astros found themselves trailing by a couple of runs midway through their contest against the New York Yankees on Sunday. The last thing Houston needed was for an Astros fan to serve as a fourth outfielder against them in Minute Maid Park.
Astros All-Star Yordan Alvarez came up to the plate with the home team trailing 3-1 in the 6th inning. The 6’5″ slugger, on a full count, sliced the ball along the left-field foul line. Yankees left fielder Everson Pereira tracked down the ball but didn’t get a chance to field it cleanly after a fan’s outstretched arm changed the trajectory of the ball, as seen below:
Umps ended up calling fan interference here for the final out of the inning pic.twitter.com/QminrGRXef
— Talkin' Yanks (@TalkinYanks) September 4, 2023
Alvarez was ruled out due to fan interference.
Pereira appeared to have a good chance of making the grab and getting Alvarez out anyway. But leaping catches while hurtling toward an outfield wall are never as easy as they look. It was at least not a guaranteed out for the Astros compared to the definitive fan interference ruling from a Steve Bartman impersonator.
The Astros were struggling up to that point against Yankees pitching. They had just 1 run on 5 hits up to that point, with one of the hits coming from Alvarez. The Astros ended up losing 6-1.
