Torii Hunter mocks a fan

The Fox Sports North broadcast of the Minnesota Twins-Kansas City Royals game Sunday took an interesting turn after the Royals’ Salvador Perez hit a home run to left field. A fan with a glove perched under it, but it went off his glove and landed a few rows back, where it was recovered by a kid. That led to Hunter (the former Twins’ center fielder who’s in his first season as a rotating color commentator for the team’s broadcasts on Fox Sports North) making fun of the fan (who later threw his glove to the kid behind him) for quite a while:

“He has a hood on, and he puts the glove in front of his face, his hand was in front of his face, and he kind of closes his eyes. He didn’t follow the ball into the glove, and he had another kid come over and thieve it away. He took your ball, he took your glove, he took your cookies. Yeah, give up your glove, because that should never happen. You should never play baseball again. Take two weeks off and don’t ever play again.”

Not following the ball into the glove should never happen, eh? Did Hunter tell his younger self that?

The weird part, too, is that Hunter continued to go in on the fan later after he moved seats:

“But the camera is following you. You can’t really get away from national TV, buddy. ‘Selfie! Shaking my head. I suck.’”

Those are quite the strong opinions from Hunter on a fan who just happened to miss a catch. Laughing at him once seems a bit understandable, but continuing to go in on him this way feels a little odd. The broadcast reporter eventually talked to the fan, who had plenty of praise for Hunter’s own career. As per For The Win, FS North gave the fan 100 scratch-off lottery tickets and a baseball, so hopefully the embarrassment was worth it. But the intensity of Hunter’s criticism here still feels a bit off.

[For The Win]

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.