Wild Card Beer-Thrower Knob Pleads Guilty
6 years ago
Ken Pagan!
If that name sounds familiar, it probably should — especially since the Jays are finally worth watching again after their wretched start, and so most of you are probably just tuning in on the season now for the first time since October. HEYO!
But even if you’re a fan who has been tuned in all along, you’ll probably remember Pagan as the squid of a Jays fan that hurled a mostly full beer can from out of the stands at Hyun Soo Kim as the Orioles’ left fielder was concentrating on making a catch in the seventh inning of last year’s AL Wild Card game.
Apparently I no longer have to say he is allegedly said squid, as Pagan pleaded guilty to a charge of mischief in a courtroom at Old City Hall in Toronto on Tuesday. Jackie Hong of the Toronto Star described the scene thusly:
Dressed in a white dress shirt with a plaid tie and black dress pants, Ken Pagan sat with a woman in a front-row bench in the courtroom at Old City Hall on Tuesday, his parents sitting behind him. Stone-faced, Pagan occasionally glanced around at observers until he was called up to make his plea.“Guilty,” he said in a barely audible whisper.
So much for all those theories that they’d nabbed the wrong man! So much for his friends being sure it couldn’t be him! He admitted it! Which makes complete and total sense, because despite all the elaborate theories… uh… it was pretty clearly him:
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“If he goes to jail, even for five minutes, you could put me on a rocket ship to the moon tonight,” [local defence lawyer, attention-seeker, one-time mayoral candidate, quote-maker for multiple pieces on this topic for some bizarre reason, and racial profiling enthusiast (?), Ari] Goldkind said, explaining that mischief under $5,000 convictions “very rarely lead to anything serious,” or even a criminal record.
Goldkind told the Star that the punishment for these kinds of charges typically “is along the lines of a donation to a charity, community service, a letter of apology or restitution for any property damaged.”
I have no idea if that’s enough, but I’m not sure that the public backlash against Pagan shouldn’t be considered, too — as well as the fact that the Blue Jays have already made clear that he is no longer welcome at Rogers Centre. None of us would want to be defined and vilified in public for our dumbest, drunkest bad impulse, so I don’t think it’s unfair to have a little bit of sympathy here.
On the other hand, it is fucking unfair to Hyun Soo Kim to have nearly been skulled by a projectile from, like, 25 feet above him. And it’s unfair for other players to have to fear for their safety when playing in our park. And for the vast majority of responsible Jays fans to have been tarred by this guy’s shitty act — not to mention having to endure longer wait times for beer last October because of the can ban his actions incurred. (Plus, based on some of the stuff on Pagan’s Jays blog, we’re talking about a liiiiiiiitle bit of a garbage clown here.)
All of which has been said more than enough times already, I think. Though, sadly, I suppose the core takeaway from this incident can’t really ever be repeated enough — no matter how minuscule the fraction of dipshit fans that will ever actually need to hear it is. DON’T THROW SHIT ONTO THE FIELD, YA DUMBS! ESPECIALLY NOT IN THE DIRECTION OF OTHER HUMAN BEINGS!
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