Man who fell asleep at baseball game sues Yankees, MLB, and ESPN for $10 million

(Image credit: YouTube.com/MLB)

last updated 8 January 2015

A man who who was caught on camera snoozing away during a New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox game is suing the Yankees, Major League Baseball, ESPN, and announcers Dan Shulman and John Kruk for $10 million, citing defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Andrew Rector somehow managed to do the impossible during the April 13 game: he fell asleep in the middle of it while sitting in an uncomfortable seat. Once the announcers saw Rector napping in the stands, they started to talk about him, wondering if he was alone or with the person next to him ("maybe that's his buddy and he likes him a lot better when he's asleep"). Rector claims in his lawsuit that this was just the beginning of a "verbal crusade" and "MLB.com continued the onslaught to a point of comparing the plaintiff to someone of a confused state of mind, disgusted, disgruntled, and unintelligent and probably intellectually bankrupt individual."

The complaint goes on to state several things that Rector claims were said about him ("Plaintiff is so stupid he cannot differentiate between his house and public place by snoozing throughout the fourth inning of the Yankee game"), but as Joe Coscarelli at New York notes, it looks like Rector is slightly confused. The announcers were rather gentle with him; it was the YouTube commenters who lived up to their reputation and posted nasty remarks. If Rector wins, it will send a message to those "idiots," his mother, Hana Rector, told the New York Post. "If he paid for the tickets, it's his prerogative what he does. Whose business is it if he's sleeping? He can do whatever he wants." --Catherine Garcia