The bare facts of the case are these: William Ligue Jr. took his two sons and possibly some other young relatives (news stories have differed on the presence of a second son and "cousins") to the White Sox-Royals game Thursday night at New Comiskey Park on the south side of Chicago. In the sixth or seventh inning, Ligue called his sister and asked if she was watching the game. She told Ligue the game wasn't on WGN that night. So Ligue told her to watch the news. During the ninth inning of the game, Ligue and his 15-year-old son ran onto the field and began to pummel Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa.

After about one-and-a-half seconds, the entire Royals dugout emptied as the players rushed to protect their coach. As the melee wound down, someone found a closed pocketknife on the ground.

Gamboa is fine. He wasn't stabbed, and in fact suffered only minor bruises. Ligue has been charged with a felony count of aggravated battery in a place of amusement (who wrote that particular criminal statute, I wonder?) and sits in jail, his bail set at $200,000.

Ligue and his son claim that they and Gamboa engaged in a running verbal battle all night, and that the final straw came in the ninth when Gamboa supposedly flipped off the Ligues.

Even non-televised games are filmed extensively, so it's not too hard for authorities to check that out. The Royals had runners on base in that inning, and Gamboa would be on camera with some frequency. Prosecutors say they see no evidence to support the Ligues's claim. And in any case, no matter what a participant says or gestures, fans should stay in the stands. Period.

By the way, Ligue has convictions for burglary and domestic violence on his record. He's a real peach.

Back when I was a kid (sometime in the late 1970s), I attended a Kansas-Texas A&M football game in Lawrence, Kan. While there are a silly few who will make a claim of some sort of "glory years" for Jayhawk football, these were not they. KU lost 37-7 and was lucky the game was that close. Toward the end of the sorry contest, Texas A&M scored a touchdown when the receiver may, or may not, have stepped out of the end zone before catching a pass. That particular score didn't really matter; the game was already way out of hand. But a fan jumped out of the stands and whacked the back judge (who made the in-bounds call) in the top of the back. I remember the ref's hat flying through the air more than the act of violence itself.

I also remember arguing with my dad about what happened. Like most kids, I preferred to think that the refs always made bad calls against my team (I was a KU fan in those days), and I argued with all the logic a nine-year-old (or eight-year-old or whatever) could muster that if the ref made a bad call, he deserved to be punished for that call. And if that meant getting whacked by a fan, then so be it.

My dad disagreed. Quite vociferously.

He was right, of course. Children don't appreciate how mistakes made on the field of play actually make games more meaningful. Kids don't really grasp the concept that perfection is something to strive toward, not something to actually achieve. Anyway, any properly-functioning adult knows that there's no room for a fan to come onto the field of play and attack a participant. Unless, of course, your name is Morganna and you come armed only with kisses, a tight t-shirt and short shorts.

Ah, those halcyon days of kissing bandits and streakers. I've always railed against ESPN's stated policy of not showing such interlopers on camera. I mean, that kinda stuff is all in fun. But now we have a case of a man (and possibly his son) plotting to get camera time by committing an act of violence. That video, of course, has been replayed dozens of times on ESPN alone--it's news, not some silly bit of fluff. But maybe the powers that be in Bristol are right. Maybe we don't need to reward dopes with a little free air time.

That's not much of a point, however, and I'm not really trying to express much more than simple shock that this event happened in the first place. The sad thing is that by performing this appalling act of premeditated violence, Ligue achieved exactly what he set out to do: Baseball fans all over the country know his name. He may go down in history as the world's worst father (if he did, in fact, abandon a number of children in his care in order to perpetrate this act, I think he qualifies with ease), and certainly he's a shoo-in for the worst baseball fan of all time, but he's got his day in the sun.

Asshole.

Jon Worley is willing to overlook his opposition to the death penalty in the case of William Ligue Jr.