Exclusive | Jeff Maier got to relive his fan interference drama all over again –
LOS ANGELES — Gleyber Torres smoked a ninth-inning pitch deep into left-center, where a Dodgers fan proved overeager Friday night.
He lowered his glove into the field of play, catching a ball that would have hit the wall and bringing it over the fence.
Everyone around baseball reached for the same name — a name that is not quite right.
“‘Jeff’ has been historically what folks have called me my whole life,” Jeff Maier said over the phone Saturday from New Hampshire, where he was shuttling his children around on a busy weekend.
“‘Jeffrey’ is reserved for being 12 years old and surrounded by media answering questions awkwardly in the right field stands, or if my mom was particularly displeased about homework or grades.”
These days, Jeff Maier is a 40-year-old father of three who has worked in technology sales for years and now is employed with Prompt Security, which focuses on artificial intelligence security.
He is also a diehard Yankees fan who was watching the eventual 6-3, 10-inning loss in Game 1 of the World Series with the volume off, avoiding the inevitable comparisons that would pop up.
Usually, he switches his phone to “Do Not Disturb” mode at 8:30 p.m., but Friday night he had some messages to return.
About 30 or 40 texts poured in, he said, friends and family needling him and asking if he had made the trip to Dodger Stadium to patrol the bleachers and snatch long drives.
Those days — back on Oct. 9, 1996, in Game 1 of the 1996 ALCS between the Yankees and Orioles — Jeffrey Maier was a preteen who watched Derek Jeter send an opposite-field drive into the right field corner at the old Yankee Stadium.
Maier scrambled toward the ball, crept his glove down the wall and intercepted a fly ball that seemed destined for the glove of Tony Tarasco.
Tarasco protested and pointed upward, but right field umpire Rich Garcia signaled a home run rather than fan interference.
The moment gave rise both to Jeter’s October legend and the dynasty that was to come.
Of course there was no replay review in ’96, and despite what the entire baseball world knew — that a fan had interfered with what might have been an out — a home run was ruled that tied the game in the eighth before Bernie Williams blasted a walk-off homer in the 11th.
Where Steve Bartman became a villain in Chicago, Maier became a minor celebrity around New York.
“I was fortunate,” Maier said. “I think there were some things about that experience that kind of put me in a position where I was forced to mature and learn about things and people and … I had a lot of supporting folks around me, like my family, that kind of helped with that [sudden fame].
“It probably worked in my favor that it helped the home team.”
Friday, technology would not allow Maier to get an heir.
Upon instant replay, Torres’ drive became a double.
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What would have been the go-ahead run instead was stranded at third base in a game the Yankees would lose in the 10th on Freddie Freeman’s grand slam.
Maier wondered whether the advancements in technology — exit velocity and distance and environmental information — at some point would fully eliminate whether a fan’s glove interfered with an extra-base hit or a home run.
“It certainly seems like the data is all there,” Maier said. “It’s at what point are you taking away from the natural component of the game that we all love so much.”
Whatever the advancements, Maier will be watching.
He could be sick of the attention, but he will indulge fans and media, last making the rounds when a fan in Houston made contact with a Carlos Correa home run in Game 2 of the 2017 ALCS.
Replays showed the ball indeed would have been a home run without the fan’s glove and would not have reached an awaiting Aaron Judge.
As the Yankees seek their first World Series since 2009, a grown-up Jeffrey Maier is still rooting.
“My fingernails are pretty well chewed down at this point,” he said. “It’s been a fun postseason.”
