One Phillies fan irked Nick Castellanos to the point where he decided to shout and gesture toward the fan in the moments after a loss Friday.
After second baseman Bryson Stott fouled out to end Philadelphia’s 9-6 setback against the Reds at Citizens Bank Park, Castellanos remained near the top of the dugout and started yelling toward the stands — while pointing his finger and appearing to gesture for someone to leave — as captured by the NBC broadcast.
It’s unclear from the video what Castellanos said or what prompted the exchange, but Jace Kaleikau — a senior video producer with the Phillies, according to LinkedIn — wrote in two posts on X that he was “right there” and witnessed a drunk fan yelling at Stott as Castellanos defended his teammate.
“I was right there and a drunk fan came all the way down by the dugout and was screaming at Stott for getting the last out,” Kaleikau wrote in one post.
“I would have been shocked if someone didn’t stand up for him. The fan crossed multiple lines, all while being like 5 feet away.”
Kaleikau added in the second post that “if there ever was a time when a fan went too far that warranted a response from a player, this was it.”
The Phillies, who holdd a ½-game lead in the NL East entering Saturday, lost for the eighth time in 12 games Friday, going just 3-for-13 with runners in scoring position and stranding 11 runners on base to open a three-game set against the Reds.
Castellanos launched his 11th homer of the season to give the Phillies a temporary 3-0 lead in the first inning, but that advantage disappeared when Cincinnati scored five times in the third and knocked Philadelphia starter Jesús Luzardo out of the game.
The outfielder is hitting .278 with a .771 OPS during his third season with the Phillies, though Castellanos’ impressive streak of playing in 236 consecutive games came to an end last month when he made an undisclosed “inappropriate comment” to manager Rob Thomson — following Thomson’s decision to remove him for a defensive replacement — and was benched for a game.
“One of the many things about Nick that I love is that he’s very emotional,” Thomson told reporters before Philadelphia’s June 17 game. “He loves to play and he loves to play every inning of every game. I just thought last night, he made an inappropriate comment after he came out.”
The Phillies send Ranger Suárez to the hill to oppose the Reds’ Nick Lodolo on Saturday.