The Red Sox banner wound up in the hands of these guys. But they didn't get the playoff tickets they wanted.

The Boston Red Sox were 10.5 games up on the New York Yankees heading into Wednesday’s game between the clubs (where they’re currently trailing 6-1 after six innings), and they can clinch the AL East if they win that one. However, there was a chance that they wouldn’t have been able to raise the AL East division champions banner after the game as they planned. That’s because they had the banner made, but it fell off a truck in nearby Somerville Monday. Fortunately, it was found by two fans; unfortunately, those fans (44-year-old Louie Iacuzzi and friend James Amaral then tried to hold out on returning it until they got some compensation from the Red Sox. Here’s the amazing Boston Globe video of their remarks, accents and all:

There are more great quotes from them in the accompanying Globe article:

“[W]e’re trying to do the right thing, but I’m not just going to hand it to them, know what I mean?” Iacuzzi said.

His friend, James Amaral, noted, “We’re working, too. I mean, my man had to run across three lanes of traffic.” He also issued an ultimatum to the hometown team.

“If they do try to put a duplicate up, you best believe we’re going to show up and say, ‘That’s not the original,’ ” Amaral said. “We’re hoping they do the right thing. You know, we did the right thing. We could have kept it, we could have put it on eBay. You know, we got connections where we could have reached out to other sources.”

Asked whether they wanted cash from the Red Sox, Iacuzzi at first said, “Yes, financial [compensation], maybe some tickets, we want something. We don’t know what we want. We want to return it, 100 percent, but we would like to get something.”

This is the worst Boston crime drama since Black Mass, or The Town, or What Doesn’t Kill You, or The Departed. (“The rat symbolizes obviousness!”) But at least the hostage-holding of the banner didn’t wind up paying off for these guys in the end, with a Red Sox spokesperson saying Wednesday afternoon that the guys had returned the banner, and that they didn’t receive anything in compensation.

And this is really an illustration of how these guys handled this all wrong. If they’d just returned it out of the goodness of their hearts, they’d be praised at the least, and they might have received some of the tickets they apparently wanted so much. Instead, hanging on to the banner for days, going to the media and saying things like “We’re trying to do the right thing, but I’m not just going to hand it to them” and “We need to negotiate here” made it clear just how mercenary they were, and sure didn’t drum up much popular support for their cause. Now, there’s popular support for the team not rewarding their ploy.

Iacuzzi and Amaral also grossly overestimated their leverage. Why would the team bribe them significantly to return a banner instead of just making another one?  Why would they give in to such public demands, and make it seem like they’ll then do that for all future memorabilia trade attempts? At any rate, the banner’s back, and its temporary hostage-holders have not been compensated, so it worked out for the Sox. Not so much for Iacuzzi and Amaral.

[The Boston Globe]

About Andrew Bucholtz

Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.