This is sad.
William Ligue, jr. along with his teenaged son attacked Kansas City Royals first-base coach Tom Gamboa last september during a game in Chicago against the White Sox. This incident has left Gamboa with partial hearing loss in his right ear.
In most states, first-degree felony assault will earn a few years in prison and a hefty fine to boot.
Judge Leo Holt sought to buck that trend. Ligue, a person who is no stranger to courtrooms and already has a number of felonies to his credit, was sentenced to 30 months probation. His son was also sentenced to probation and already violated it!
Seems that Holt, rather than make the idot face up and take responcibility for his actions, reasoned that baseball is a violent enough sport to provoke a beer-soaked fan into attacking a 55 year old man who had his back turned to the crowd.
It is interesting that Ligue was not barred from attending an MLB games in the future. At least from a judicial point. I haven’t heard but I would imaging that MLB would bar him or his ilk to attend anymore games in Chicago or elsewhere. But I guess Ligue could sue MLB now. I dunno, maybe things are different in Chicago
Given the lax legal system in Chicago, hell, IL for that matter, maybe I should take up residency there and take up a life of violent crime. Maybe there are more judges like Leo Holt.
Either I haven’t been looking hard enough, but I can’t seem to find anything in either Chicago paper on it. Editorial or otherwise (I did like the headline though!)
“As I sat there watching this on television, two things came to mind. First, I can think of easier ways to get tossed from a baseball stadium. Second, I’m positive I saw one of those guys on COPS last week.”
It is odd that the Royals and White Sox are battling for the AL Central title.
More so, in a game in april this year, same teams, some idiot attacked a first-base umpire instead. The savant stated that he was going for (Royals first-baseman) Mike Sweeney instead.
Given that umpires wear dark “uniforms” and the Royals are in light-grey “away” uniforms, how could he have gotten it that mixed up?
I really want to believe that there are good things and good people in Chicago, but this added to many other things-related or not-are really making that hard to fathom.
Maybe there’s some kind of “home rule” going on here. After all it was a Chicagoen, in Chicago, attacking someone from KC. Now if someone from KC attacked a Chicagoen, we might have to be a bit more harsh with our verdict. Kind of reminds me of the time that guy in Germany attacked Monica Seles. I don’t think they did much to that guy. If he would have attacked Steffi Graf I think his punishment would have been a bit more severe.
