Nats hecklers ask ‘Who’s on third?’

When the New York Mets came to RFK Stadium for the final weekend of the 2006 season, Matt Krimm and Dave Hammerly were determined to take their last shot of the year.

The season before, they became strong supporters of the Washington Nationals.

They tortured the opposing team’s third base coach, and their target that weekend was future Washington Nationals manager Manny Acta.

This ritual started when Krimm, the owner of W. Curtis Draper cigar shop downtown on 14th Street, and Hammerly, who works at the shop, were sitting in their box seats during a Nationals game in their inaugural season when they saw some nearby fans razzing Houston Astros coach Doug Mansolino.

“They were really getting on him, not vulgar or anything, but they were killing him, and it was getting to him,” Krimm said. “We picked up on that.”

They not only picked up on it, but raised it to an art form. They would find out the third base coach for the opposing team, then get on the Internet to find out every obscure fact about him. Any little sore spot, they picked at it.

“We try to be creative, find out stuff about these coaches like where they grew up or where they coached or managed before, if they got cut from somewhere,” Krimm said. “It is free game, as long as it is clean.”

The relationships between fans and sports figures has taken a beating in recent years, from the Brawl at the Palace to the two goons who leaped onto the field at Comiskey Park in Chicago and attacked Kansas City Royals first base coach Tom Gamboa. The image is often one of cursing fans, with courage via beer, going far beyond any reasonable boundaries.

Well, Krimm, Hammerly, Donnee Thompson and their other partners in mayhem are bringing back the good old art of fan razzing without the ugliness.

“We never get vulgar,” Krimm said. “There is nothing personal, no mention of family members, only stuff within baseball and what they have done. So many of these guys bounced around the minor leagues and played in all sorts of places and only got so far in their careers. So we find out that someone got shelled in a game in rookie league ball or something like that, and hammer away on it.”

Sometimes they get no reaction, other times they get their share of dirty looks. Krimm said Cardinals third base coach Jose Oquendo enjoyed their act.

“Whitey Herzog once referred to him as ‘the secret weapon’ and we rode him about that, kept making fun of it,” Krimm said. “He gave us some banter back and forth.”

They were primed and ready when Acta came on the field for the final weekend of the season.

“We went online and did research on Manny, printed it out and took it to the game with us,” Hammerly said. “We had it in our pockets and would pull it out looking for something to yell. We are pretty well prepared. We wait until the crowd might be quiet and then blurt something out. Manny could hear everything, and it was hysterical. You could see he was wondering where we were getting all this stuff from.”

Acta was particularly targeted because of the uniform he was wearing.

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