Anatomy of a Pitch Invasion
I love meeting intense baseball fans. It happens maybe twice a year. Met one the other day in the Bronx and he had a story to tell. Of course he did. We were sitting in a chilling rain on the third base side in the 100 level. There could’ve been worse seats. I hadn’t been to the generic Yankee Stadium for about seven years or so, and now the pinstripers await the Kansas City Royals this weekend for a late-1970s replay of playoff business and powder-blue nostalgia.
As the 2024 postseason bandwagon is now triple-parked and true baseball fans have to wear the hairshirt of explaining the post-season format to Johnny Come Latelies, I now relish the details of a game that took place 31 years ago in the Bronx.
Early in our one-year relationship, my girlfriend, who’s not into sports, acknowledged my baseball addiction and was scraping for baseball references and told me her older brother once ran on the field at Yankee Stadium and caused a ruckus with the Red Sox in town. She had breadcrumbs of information, so I began sleuthing to find the truth. It was 1993 or so, she said. She was correct. September 18, 1993. Took me a few months to figure out how to meet Aaron Lemcke, an intense Yankees fan with startling blue eyes, and gather his story. Finally, our union went down during the final weekend of the regular season.
It was Saturday, Sept. 29, and Aaron was hunched forward in his seat in the seventh row of section 124 at Yankee Stadium, compelling one of his favorite players—Austin Hill—to deliver a hit. It was the final weekend of the regular season and the Yankees—already American League East champions—were facing the Pittsburgh Pirates and their rookie phenom hurler and cultural icon Paul Skenes. The 46-year-old Mahopac, NY, resident had just the week before marked an anniversary on Facebook with one of his childhood pals.
That anniversary was Sept. 18, 1993, at the old Yankee Stadium, Aaron and his pal Austin from Pleasantville, NY, ran onto the field in the ninth inning and changed the course of the game. An apparent Yankees loss to the Red Sox was suddenly transformed into a magical Bronx win because of their game interference. They were 15-year-old kids who used a rain delay to creep down from the upper deck to the third-base line railing. Aaron figured this was their last chance to try to slide into second base, which was their innocent goal. Ninth inning, about to turn 16 which might mean harsher punishment if they did it next season. They both decided to give it a go. Over the rail Aaron went, and onto an MLB playing surface during game action.
They came from Pleasantville under the false pretenses they were members of a youth group that was making the trip to a Saturday afternoon contest between two AL East clubs trying to catch the mighty Toronto Blue Jays.
The game was on national television, with Greg Gumbel at the microphone helm. 55,672 was the reported attendance. There was a chilly rain, as there was just last week when I met Aaron. In front of us was a phalanx of New York City cops in rain ponchos with weapons, including tasers, bulging under their rain gear. There was also the protective netting in front of us, so I told Aaron if he was getting itchy to repeat his deed of 31 years ago, it’d be a tall task. Aaron had posted a famous photo of the Reds fan in a Johnny Bench jersey who ran on the field in Cincinnati a few weeks back and was famously tased and a Getty Images photographer captured the graphic (and probably unnecessary) pain which went viral on the internet.
Running on the field was pretty run of the mill back in the early-1990s, Aaron said, and he and his pal just wanted to slide into second base. Aaron’s friend Austin made it to second base, but Aaron succumbed to the wet grass behind third and fell, and was quickly seized by security. But their youth spared them the aggro violence you see now when NYPD and stadium security guys track down modern day pitch invaders. As Aaron and his friend leaped the rail, the game was about to end. It was 7:20 p.m. They had no idea there was two outs and Mike Stanley as at the plate as the Yankees last hope.
Greg Harris, the bespectacled “switch” pitcher was on the hill for Boston with a 3-1 lead. Matt Nokes and Bernie Williams quickly made outs grounded to Boston shortstop John Valentin. Then Harris, whose glasses might’ve fogged up, hit the unadorned Mike Gallego to put a runner on first base. Up came pinch-hitter Mike Stanley, who was having a standout year for the Yanks. He fouled one off against Harris, then took a strike. Then he lifted a routine fly ball into left field where Mike Greenwell was able to “camp under it” to end the game for a 3-1 Red Sox win.
Not so fast.
“Are you with me?” Aaron turned to say to Austin. He got the nod from his long-time pal. So they both hurdled the third base railing and while Austin beelined for second base, Aaron ran toward third base umpire Tim Welke, who immediately saw him and declared a dead ball. That meant that Greenwell’s 27th out catch in left was void, and Stanley’s at-bat was to continue.
CBS announcer Greg Gumbel was quick to point out: “Welke called time out immediately when the wackos ran on the field.” As guards gathered in the invaders from Pleasantville, legendary Yankees PA announcer Bob Shepherd is heard in the background pronouncing “The game is not over” for the benefit of the rabid Yankees fans on their feet and hungry for a second life.
After a Wade Boggs infield hit scored Gallego, Andy Stankiewicz was the pinch runner for Boggs with two outs and Dion James due up. James earned a walk from Harris, Don Mattingly came to the plate. Yankees radio guy John Sterling had already mentioned the only reason the Yankees were still alive is because “two idiots ran onto the field.”
Two kids from Pleasantville didn’t care they were being judged by baseball announcers taking a moral high ground. They were inside the bowels of the stadium via the dugout steps. Red Sox manager Butch Hobson had given Aaron and his pal an earful of verbal abuse. Being minors, there was very little procedure in terms of taking names and preparing any type of dramatic lifetime ban, etc.
When Donnie Baseball lined a single into right field and won the game for the Yankees, Aaron said the NYPD police detail overlooking them near the clubhouse rooms congratulated them The Daily News back page the next day was “Trespass & Triumph” with a photo of a prone Aaron Lemcke in front of a perplexed Red Sox player. Subhed was: “Fans on Field Allow Yanks 3 out Rally.” Aaron was shown briefly on air being detained by two rain-coated guards, which is rare these days because showing pitch invaders just encourages future pitch invaders.
When Aaron got to school the following Monday, he was called to the principal’s office. The head administrator had a picture of Aaron from the New York Post with a target drawn on his forehead. Red Sox fans in Westchester weren’t happy, apparently. His sister was in college in New Hampshire at the time, and Aaron’s parents told her not to acknowledge that her little brother had killed the Red Sox game in the Bronx.
Greg Gumbel’s sign-off for the game was “Life is not always fair, sometimes it’s a little weird.” Sterling on Yankees radio was repeatedly apologetic for the Yankees turn of events, with Michael Kay questioning the parental skills of people who allow their kids to run onto the field. Even Jim Kaat, alongside Gumbel, turned philosophical thanks to Aaron’s diamond intrusion. “A game that ended 12 minutes ago is still not over. How do you explain that?”
Aaron still enjoys that distant moment and is not the deviant they all declared him to be when he took the field. “When I looked out and saw my buddy had slid into second base, I was so happy,” Aaron said. “We didn’t know the timing of it all and the fact it saved the game for them.” So when you hear of “lifetime bans” for pitch invaders, go ahead and scoff in the days of StubHub. Facial recognition wasn’t around in 1993, so Aaron Lemcke, Yankees diehard, marches himself into the new, shopping-mall like Yankee Stadium as a guest of a Pirates fan who was lucky enough to meet his beautiful sister last November. There’s no blocking that, and there he was in the cold rain of late-October, buying $16 cans of Stella, urging on his squad with an intensity that only a guy who had run onto the field 31 years ago can summon.
—Spike Vrusho is the author of “Benchclearing: Baseball’s Greatest Fights and Riots” published by Lyons Presss in 2008.