By PETER KERASOTIS
Florida Today

The videotape keeps running over and over, and yet it still doesn't seem real. A man is rushing the field and attacking a rules keeper.

And suddenly you wonder which side of the Atlantic you're on.

The first time he saw the tape of a crazed fan attacking his friend, umpire Laz Diaz, Bill Mick's first instinct was to think, "Don't hit him, Laz! Whatever you do, don't hit him!"

Diaz didn't.

That doesn't surprise Mick, a former minor league umpire who is now a morning talk show host at a Florida radio station. Mick has known Diaz several years now, and teaches at an umpire camp with him in the offseason.

"We correspond regularly through e-mails," Mick said. "Laz is a great guy. I'm not surprised he handled it the way he did."

Which is to say, professionally.

"Doesn't it tell you something that the players immediately came to his aid?" Mick noted. "That shows you the respect they have for Laz and for umpires in general."

In fact, while Diaz held back from throwing a swing, a few players didn't.

There were a couple of punches thrown and some Darnell Dockett-style stomping going on as the fan was restrained against the ground.

Diaz later said his training in "hand-to-hand combat" as a former reserve in the Marines helped him shake off his attacker.

Wonderful, isn't it? Let's see, do you know the infield fly rule, where to be positioned on a 6-4-3 double play attempt and Marine hand-to-hand combat skills? If so, you too might be well on your way to a career as an umpire.

It shouldn't have to come to this, of course. The attack on Diaz was what captured the video byte, but Tuesday's also was the fourth incident of a so-called fan running out onto the field at Chicago's U.S. Cellular Field. It is also the same site where last season two idiots ran onto the field and attacked Tom Gamboa, who was then the Kansas City Royals' first-base coach.

Today, Gamboa is a bullpen coach, because the attack left him with impaired hearing.

Of course, it isn't only in Chicago where we find such hooliganism. Who can forget two years ago, during a playoff game between the Yankees and Mariners at Yankee Stadium, when a golf ball, a Walkman, a shot glass, coins, beer, batteries and other debris was thrown onto the field? Oh yeah, three fans also came out of the stands, too.

The best thing the late Howard Cosell ever did was to start the trend where TV cameras don't follow fans as they rush the field. Cosell refused to give such jerks the spotlight, a practice that TV continues down to this day. At the same time, though, we tend to forget just how often all this happens, until someone demands the camera lens by attacking an official.

It makes you wonder.

"How do we get to the point," Mick asked, "where this is appropriate and acceptable behavior in the minds of fans?"

We get there gradually.

The phenomenon of fans rushing the field has been going on as far back as anyone can remember.

Just look at the replay of Bill Mazeroski's World Series homer in 1960, or Hank Aaron's homer when he broke Babe Ruth's record in 1974. And now today.

No generation has cornered the market on idiots.

Today's ballparks are havens for rude and crude behavior. People think buying a ticket affords them the right curse, swear, get drunk ... and now worse. Rising ticket prices isn't the only reason why many fans stay away from ballparks and arenas. It is also because, more and more, it's loudmouth louts who inhabit the stands. Who wants to take their kids into that type of environment? It's better to just stay at home and watch it on TV where the cameras ignore the idiots.

From the comfort of our family rooms, we sometimes forget just how bad it is. Unless, of course, Nike makes a commercial out of a naked fan coming out onto a playing field. Then we think it's funny, right? Well, ask Monica Seles if she thinks it's funny. Her career was never the same after a deranged fan stabbed her in the back at a tennis tournament in 1993. But that happened in Germany, so we tend to push it back into the recesses of our minds and dismiss it as a European thing.

We don't react unless we have to.

Well, we have to now. We have to post signs at stadiums and arenas and on tickets that puts fans on notice that if they come onto the field, there will be stiff fines and jail time. In this post 9-11 world that we live in, anything short of that is an invitation for tragedy.

Earlier this week, Bill Mick watched in disbelief as his friend Laz Diaz shook off a deranged attacker.

He could've seen worse.