Proposing at a sporting event is a romantic way for sports fans to express their love.
One Los Angeles Dodgers fan might have gone too far in trying to show his commitment to his girlfriend when he was tackled by security after running into the outfield to pop the question. A video of the grand gesture, which happened on Opening Day Thursday at Dodger Stadium, went viral.
Ricardo Juárez, a sushi chef from Riverside, California, was the man who was asking his girlfriend, Stephani Gutierrez, to marry him. He told the Los Angeles Times that his extreme action was a whim. He had the ring and a plan to maybe ask the question at their seats in the stands. But, as the game went on, he wanted to declare his love in a big way.
“Just show your wives that you love them,” he said in Spanish. “Tell them the truth, always fight, treat them with love and do everything for them, because well, she is the love of your life.’
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Gutierrez was returning from the bathroom when she saw her boyfriend in the middle of the outfield on his knee and then tackled.
“I barely caught it. I don’t even know if I had a chance to be excited,’ she said. ‘I was so scared about what was going to happen to him.”
When Juárez was knocked over by a security guard, fans could see his baseball cap fly off his head. What they couldn’t see was that he lost the ring in the incident, too.
“I was yelling and telling them in English, ‘My ring, my ring,’” he recalled. “That’s the only thing that mattered.”
After the Dodgers beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 8-2, Juárez was given a bag with his things — and the ring.
He was also given a citation and a one-year ban from the stadium. He went to the doctor a few days later because of pain from the hit. He was given a note to miss work for four days, Gutierrez told the Los Angeles Times.
But he got the commitment for life. He proposed to Gutierrez again later that night on the party bus that took them to the game.
She said yes.
