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Meet The Mets Fan Who Ran Onto The Field To Celebrate Johan Santana’s No-Hitter & Ended Up Missing His Son’s First Birthday

Submitted by on June 5, 2012 – 11:21 amNo Comment
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Even more incredible than the no-hitter that Johan Santana threw for the New York Mets on Friday night? The story of Rafael Diaz, the self-described “Mets nut” who ruined the first no-no in Metropolitans history by running onto the field to celebrate Santana’s historic feat before getting tackled by Citi Field security. It goes a little something like this:

After Santana finished throwing his no-hitter on Friday night, all of his teammates ran out onto the field to celebrate with him. Diaz, who later said that he “couldn’t help” himself, joined them, too. As you can see in the photo above, he’s the one jumping into the pile with a pair of jorts on. Just seconds after doing that, security caught up to him, tackled him, and eventually hauled him off to the real police, who charged him with trespassing and threw him into a Queens jail. He spent two nights there before he was released on Sunday. Pretty crazy, right?

Wait, it gets worse. Diaz has a son who was having a birthday party on Saturday—a birthday party for his first birthday and a birthday party that he was supposed to be at. Unfortunately, though, he was locked up when the birthday party was going on and he couldn’t attend. The trouble didn’t stop there, either. Once he was released, the Mets announced that Diaz was banned from Citi Field for life. And, believe it or not, there’s even more. Diaz could also face a $25,000 fine and, more importantly, a year in jail because of an “unruly fan law” that New York City has on the books. So, at the end of the day, Diaz’s 30 seconds of fun have literally altered his life for the time being.

Whew. Let this be a lesson to all sports fans out there. Let the players celebrate out on the field. You stay in your seats. Or else risk walking around looking like this for awhile:

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