DAHOF Top 100 -- #7 Carlton Fisk

On Tuesday night May 22nd, 1990 the Chicago White Sox were in the Bronx playing the New York Yankees. Deion Sanders was playing in his 24th career major league game. Carlton Fisk was logging his 2,172nd.

The Sox were winning 1-0 with one out in the third inning, Randy Velarde was on third base when Deion Sanders strolled to the plate. He turned Melido Perez's second pitch into weak pop fly towards the shortstop. Rather than run to first (the ball could have dropped for an error) Sanders showed the true character of his heart by trotting to the dugout. Yankee fans booed.

Fisk: Run the fucking ball out, you piece of shit...
Sanders: What? 
Fisk: Run the ball out.

Infuriated, Fisk stewed until Sanders came to the plate again to lead off the fifth inning "I made eye contact with him on purpose the next time he came up (in the fifth inning)," Fisk said. "He mumbled something and I said, 'What?' Then he said, 'The days of slavery are over.' I told him, 'There's a right way and a wrong way to play this game.'

Following the game Fisk was quoted:
"It's the Yankee pride and the Yankee pinstripes involved here, Some of those guys got to be turning over in their graves. Watch. He'll go out and play good now. And I hope he does. I play for the other team, but that even offends me. Now he comes up the second time and he wants to make it a racial issue. There's no racial issue involved. It's professional etiquette. There's something special about Yankee Stadium, and that's why I didn't talk about it (Tuesday) night. I might have said something I'd be sorry for. I'm either old and cynical or old and sentimental. Either way, I know what's right and what's wrong."