There’s a lot of … um, discussion … this morning after a fan was tasered last light in Philadelphia for running out onto the field during a Phillies game. Getting liquored up, jumping the fence and running around like an idiot is a proud if questionable tradition at baseball games, but this is the first time in my memory that this particular method was used to subdue the fan. The crowd really let the cops have it for taking down the kid, but considering it’s Philly, they might just as well have been giving it to the fan for his massive failure.

Most of the noise is being made by two groups of folks.  On one side, you have those who feel it was an excessive use of force, questioning if the use of a non-lethal but still dangerous weapon such as a Taser was really necessary (and suggesting that it was only the girth and relative corpulence of the officer in question that required its use).  The other side would point out that we live in a world where people park bombs in Times Square and remind us of Tom Gamboa, the base coach for the Royals who was beaten by fans during a 2002 game in Chicago.

Personally, I think it was probably a little heavy-handed, but if you put yourself in a position like that you have no idea what kind of crap you’re gonna get into.  This is what happens when we have  a generation that was raised thinking that paparazzi tabloids are news, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan are role models, and reality TV is a career path.  Frankly, the dumbass is lucky it wasn’t a football game, or someone might have gone Terry Tate on his ass …