It’s a Nasty Case of Pennant Fever at Yankee Stadium

NEW YORK — They swarmed out of the surrounding subways and gridlocked highways, jockeying for parking spaces, standing elbow to elbow at the entrances. They were in a party mood, celebrating pennant fever, October in August at Yankee Stadium.

And then they turned ugly.

With Toronto opening a four-game series against the Yankees and the teams separated by a single game in the American League East standings, a crowd of 43,304, sixth largest of the season for the Yankees, showed up for Monday night’s game.

Ordinarily, that would be a positive in the South Bronx attendance watch, with owner George Steinbrenner complaining about people unwilling to come to games there and talking about moving his franchise elsewhere. But the positive quickly turned negative.

During batting practice, the crowd booed the Blue Jays, chanting, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” at a team that has a roster full of Americans, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans, but no Canadians.

And things went downhill from there.

When Metropolitan Opera star Robert Merrill stepped to the microphone to sing the Canadian national anthem, a tradition wherever the Blue Jays play, the fans nearly drowned him out with their boos.

This had become more than a pennant race. This had become an exercise in nationalism and -- for some of the Americans playing for Toronto -- an embarrassment.

“That was total disrespect,” said right fielder Joe Carter, who comes from Kansas. “That’s just not right. I never saw anything like that in my life. I was embarrassed to be from the United States.”

“Booing the national anthem like that, I thought it was awful,” said manager Cito Gaston, who lives in Florida.

On Tuesday, longtime public address announcer Bob Sheppard tried to prevent a repeat of opening night by reading an announcement before Merrill sang the national anthems.

“Some Yankee fans ... were thoughtless in their failure to honor our neighbors to the north. We apologize for this disrespect,” Sheppard said.

Sheppard has, in the past, read similar announcements regarding the booing of the Canadian anthem.

When Merrill began “O Canada,” there were boos and chants of “U-S-A!” from the rowdies in the right-field bleachers. However, they were drowned out by cheers for the rest of the anthem.

The opening of “The Star-Spangled Banner” was greeted with wild applause that quickly died down.

Center fielder Devon White, who grew up in New York City and used to sit in the right field seats at Yankee Stadium, called it good old fashioned ignorance.

“Every player here comes from the United States or South America or somewhere else,” White said. “That’s very distasteful, to boo the Canadian national anthem. That’s not right at all. I hope Canadians don’t take it personally.”

The frenzy built in the top of the first inning when Roberto Alomar, who lives in San Diego, was called out on strikes and then thrown out of the game along with Gaston for arguing plate umpire Joe Brinkman’s call.

Late in the game, when White and Carter reached their positions in the outfield, fans started throwing things at them. The debris included bottles and batteries. “I’m just glad it wasn’t bat day,” Carter said.