The man in the screencap above, taken from ESPN's April 13 broadcast of a game between the Red Sox and Yankees, is a deeply sensitive man who does not understand how the internet works. We know this because he has filed a defamation lawsuit against ESPN, John Kruk, Dan Shulman, and MLB Advanced Media for putting his sleeping face on TV and the internet.


The litigious napper's name is Andrew Rector, and his complaint (which you can read at the bottom of the page) is something else. In it, he alleges that ESPN "opened an unending verbal crusade against the napping plaintiff" when he was put on the air, and that Shulman and Kruk unleashed an "avalanche of disparaging words" against him. According to the complaint, these "disparaging words" included "stupor," "fatty," "unintelligent," and "stupid." Also:

John Kruck [sic] in his verbal attack insinuated that the plaintiff is individual that know neither history nor understood the beauty or rivalry between Boston Red Sox and New York Yankee [sic].


As you can see in this clip, Shulman and Kruk never said any of those things about Rector during the broadcast. It seems that what has happened here is that Rector has mistaken mean internet comments for ESPN- and MLB-endorsed defamation. To wit:

Plaintiff alleges that MLB.com, juxtapositions of photos and text of two men kissing each other and caption "sleeping Yankee's Fan cares not for your rivalry talk" falsely implied that plaintiff engaged in that type of conduct described or portrayed by the picture. In light of all the surrounding circumstances.

That completely nonsensical paragraph seems to be referring to this blog post on NotSportsCenter.com, which has nothing to do with MLB or ESPN. But anyway, Andrew Rector wants everyone to know that he's totally not gay, bro. Stupid, maybe, but totally not gay.

Here's the full complaint:

Yankee Complaint


[The Smoking Gun]