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Professional athletes can usually respect a pretty rude welcome when they play on the road, as they’re typically greeted by a home crowd that isn’t going to roll out the red carpet for the opposing team.
However, there are a few fanbases that are known for going above and beyond when it comes to fostering a particularly hostile environment, like Georgia football fans who bark at anyone who supports the enemy or the many people in Philadelphia who don’t exactly channel the spirit of the so-called “City of Brotherly Love” when it comes to sports.
That also tends to be the case at Yankee Stadium, as the “bleacher creatures” who’ve been rooting for the Bronx Bombers since 1903 aren’t really known for their hospitality.
Yankees fans have historically reserved an extra level of enmity for the Red Sox and anyone who cheers for them, but that hasn’t spared countless members of other teams from drawing their wrath over the decades.
There aren’t many people who are aware of that reality quite like Jose Canseco, as the fairly infamous slugger got one of the rudest welcomes imaginable while he was a member of the Athletics in 1991.
How Yankees fans drove Jose Canseco to the brink with the help of Madonna
Canseco was no stranger to controversy during (or after) his Major League Baseball career.
In 1989, he found himself dealing with a couple of legal headaches, as he led police in Florida on a high-speed chase in February before he was arrested in California a couple of months later after a gun was discovered in his car.
A few years later, he made headlines for all of the wrong reasons yet again thanks to what transpired on February 14, 1992, which is when the outfielder was charged with aggravated assault for ramming his Porsche into a BMW that was being driven by his estranged wife Esther.
That incident occurred less than a year after plenty of members of the press romantically linked Canseco to Madonna after he was captured entering and leaving her apartment building in New York City within the span of a couple of hours on the evening of May 10, 1991 (he has denied anything actually went down during his visit).
That gossip-inducing development transpired while Canseco and the Athletics were in town to face off against the Yankees, and the fact that it was splattered over the tabloids in the city meant hometown fans had no shortage of ammunition to deploy while heckling him.
Things came to a head when Oakland headed to Yankee Stadium on May 13th, as Canseco had to be restrained from going after a fan who was ejected after the A’s star claimed he mocked him over his Cuban heritage (the spectator in question disputed that account, saying he was simply among a crowd of people that had harnessed various aspects of his personal life to successfully get under his skin).
While you could argue those fans crossed the line, Canseco had committed the cardinal sin of dealing with bullies by acknowledging they’d managed to hit a sore spot.
Things escalated even further when the Athletics returned to Yankee Stadium on July 29th, as the contest briefly descended into chaos after security was dispatched to the bleachers in right field when fans started throwing objects at Canseco—including a blow-up doll wearing an “I LOVE JOSE” shirt and a blonde wig designed to resemble Madonna.
Canseco ended up laughing off the incident after the game (which his team won), but if you somehow needed any proof Yankees fans are ruthless, this is a shining example.