Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Jewish Fan Steals Second at Rangers Game

Jeremy Pinsly doesn’t play professional baseball, but during the Texas Rangers’ opener on Monday, he stole second base.

“My boss told me he’d give me $1,000 [to do it], and an extra $100 if I slid headfirst,” the 23-year-old, who works in marketing, wrote in an e-mail to friends. “Me being a Jew, or a money whore, as some would say, I couldn’t help but accept the offer.”

Here’s how it went down: The Blue Jays were leading the Rangers 4-3 at the bottom of the eighth inning. So Pinsly traded his hockey T-shirt for a friend’s Rangers one, waved goodbye to his friends and their center-field seats, and stepped to the edge of the box where a barrier loomed — higher than the homerun wall — meant to separate spectators from the field.

Pinsly sidled up to a man at the wall’s edge, and asked, “Is this a bad idea?” before leaping over it, hanging, dropping on to the concrete, and finally hopping over the lower second wall and on to the field.

“I took off sprinting,” Pinsly said. “There was a moment when I knew it was in the bag.” Since he had plenty of time, the Dallas resident dove headfirst into second. The crowd cheered. He gave a half-hug to Blue Jays second baseman Aaron Hill (which, “almost got me in legal trouble”) then waved his hands in the air (“to pump up the crowd”). Pinsly waited patiently to be escorted from the field by security guards, who walked him down the third baseline. People screamed and took pictures. Pinsly hollered, “Go Rangers.”

“I’m not even a big Rangers fan,” he told The Shmooze.

He didn’t have a driver’s license on him, so he produced a traffic citation, and was supervised for the remainder of the game. Pinsly is banned from Rangers Ballpark for a year, and Jewish or not, he is $1,100 richer. He’s also sort of famous — strangers shout, “Hey you’re that guy,” and he’s received Facebook messages ranging from marriage proposals to genuflection. One note sums up the afternoon well: “dude … amazing.”

Pinsly admits that fame has been seductive, “If I had known, I would’ve tried to do some more stuff out there. Hindsight’s 20/20.”

The Rangers pulled out a win in the bottom of the ninth, but Pinsly can’t say whether or not he had anything to do with it.

“You never know. You’d like to think so,” he said.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.