I guess you could type the phrase “Pirates catcher helpless in the face of” a lot of things — sliding players, incoming fastballs, fate — but this one is a doozy: Pittsburgh Pirates catcher Chris Snyder’s wife was driving their car and (allegedly) almost hit a pedestrian on a scooter. The guy followed the car to a gas station and tried to attack her. Snyder recently had back surgery, so couldn’t do anything to help. The WTAE Pittsburgh headline makes it sound way worse: “Pirates’ Catcher Forced To Watch As Wife Attacked At Gas Station”, like this guy was the head of a terrorist organization on 24 and had handcuffed him to a pipe or something.
Passerby Joe Changle was the first person to stop and help, and the story he tells is a grand one.
“He swung at me a couple of times. I told him, ‘Don’t do it again, or I’m going to put you down.’ And he came over again. I just tripped him up, put him on the ground and held him down.”
While Changle tried to subdue the suspect, police said Modhwadia bit him in the arm.
An off-duty Pittsburgh police officer happened to be driving by and stepped in to help and that’s when, police said, [attacker Subhash] Modhwadia began throwing punches with a key between his fingers.
The criminal complaint says Modhwadia then took off his shoe and threw it at the officer.
The image of a pissed off 44-year old Indian guy on a scooter throwing fake Wolverine punches is just the appetizer, as the following paragraph should be inked onto something and stored in the Hall of Records.
“He took off his shoe and threw it. Another guy came over and said he was an off-duty cop. He picked him up threw him in the weeds. The (suspect) came back up again. Then the police came and he took his shoe off and threw it at the cop and hit the cop with his shoe,” said witness Chuck Crooks.
Sure, but what happened with the shoe?
So let me recap this for you: a professional athlete who has recently had back surgery is well enough to ride around in a car and get out of the car when someone tries to attack his wife and family, but he’s not well enough to step in and handle a guy whose most dangerous weapon is a shoe, and who could be easily tripped by a passerby and tossed into the bushes by another. Also, how awesome is it that a criminal being thrown is witnessed by a guy named “Chuck Crooks”?
I don’t remember reading the Yahoo fantasy update about Chris Snyder being paralyzed (and I can’t imagine any amount of soreness would keep me from defending my wife and children), but hey, at least for once him standing around doing nothing didn’t lose the game.
