A hostile man tells William Grant to take off his Red Sox hat and spit on it. When Grant refuses, the man grabs a hammer.
By CHRIS TISCH
Published October 28, 2004
LARGO - Growing up in Pittsburg, William Grant saw a pretty good sports rivalry between the Pittsburg Steelers and the Cleveland Browns.
But one night last week, he got a taste of perhaps sports' most heated rivalry: the Yankees versus the Red Sox.
Grant, who lives in Largo, was wearing a Boston Red Sox ballcap when he and his roommate visited the Country Club Lounge on East Bay Drive early morning of Oct. 21.
Just a couple of hours earlier, the Red Sox had made history by beating the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series.
Grant, 29, noticed two men in the bar staring at him, but didn't say anything to them, he said.
Grant, a cook, said he stayed at the bar less than an hour and then left. On the way out, the two men followed him. They asked Grant and his roommate if they were Red Sox fans. Grant told them, "No, it's just a hat."
Once outside, one of the men told Grant to take off his hat, toss it on the ground and spit on it.
Grant refused. He said: "Hey, it's just sports."
But that just seemed to make the man more angry.
The man then went to his pickup and grabbed a large hammer. He confronted Grant with the hammer and told him to throw his hat on the ground and spit on it. Grant tossed the hat down, but refused to spit.
Grant, who abandoned baseball after the strike in the 1990s, said he told the man: "I'm not even a baseball fan."
Grant's roommate, Paul Adolphson, yelled at the man to leave them alone. Instead, the man lifted the hammer and came at him, threatening to bash his head in. Adolphson climbed into his car.
The man then smashed the hammer into the front windshield of the car, shattering the glass and spraying Adolphson with shards.
Adolphson called 911 on his cell phone. The hammer-wielding man saw him making the call and drove off with his companion. Grant and Adolphson chased the man's truck, but were unable to get the license plate number. They then drove to the Police Department to file a report.
Police went to the bar, where the two assailants had used credit cards to pay their bill. Officers got a name from a receipt, but have made no arrests.
Reached Wednesday, Grant said he isn't even that big a Red Sox fan, and cheered for them on behalf of friends who are Sox fans. The hat he wore wasn't even his. It belongs to his roommate's son.
But when Grant later told friends about the incident, they told him he didn't really understand the intensity of the rivalry.
