Man who was shown on ESPN sleeping during baseball game files defamation suit

BRONX, N.Y., July 7 (UPI) -- A man who was shown sleeping during the broadcast of a Yankee-Red Sox baseball game on ESPN has filed a defamation suit claming that he was portrayed as being "fatty, unintelligent and stupid."

Andrew Robert Rector's Bronx County Supreme Court lawsuit names Major League Baseball Advanced Media, ESPN New York, the New York Yankees, and ESPN announcers Dan Shulman and John Kruk as defendants.

Rector is seeking $10 million in damages for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress after being shown on television during the April 13 game between the Yankees and the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx.

"In the course of watching the game plaintiff napped and this opened unending verbal crusade against the napping plaintiff," the complaint states, Courthouse News reported.

"Announcers like Dan Shulman and John Kruk unleashed avalanche of disparaging words against the person of and concerning the plaintiff. These words, include but not limited to 'stupor, fatty, unintelligent, stupid' knowing and intending the same to be heard and listened to by millions of people all over the world."

The curiously-worded complaint makes reference to the shot of Rector sleeping being posted on MLB.com and continuing "the onslaught to a point of comparing the plaintiff to someone of a confused state of mind, disgusted disgruntled and unintelligent and probably intellectually bankrupt individual."