Among Drunken Brawls, I Spotted Class
September 18, 2008
This is kind of off subject for a hunting and outdoor blog but last night on my ride home from the baseball game, I began feeling a compelling need to write about the night.
This week I attended all three Tampa Bay Rays’ home games against the Boston Red Sox. I’ll spare you the roller coaster ride of events of the three games. From a game perspective, all three games offered a variety of entertainment, from multiple home runs, stolen bases, hit batters, close plays, etc. In short, it was a baseball playoff-type atmosphere.
Last night was the third and final game of the series as well as the final regular season game between the two squads. There’s a possibility these two teams will face each other again in the playoffs.
If you were a Rays fan, last night was sweet provided you kept your focus on the game and not the drunken slobs sitting, or should I say fighting, in the stands. Beer was flying around the stadium far more than the 15,000 cow bells that were given out to the first of the fans to arrive at the park.
As the game went on and the score between the Rays and Sox widened, the amount of alcohol being consumed rose exponentially! The noise level went up and soon, if you took a moment to look around the stadium, you could see security and St. Petersburg police moving in swarms to squelch the next fight and remove out of control fans.
Around the 7th inning I got up from my seat and along with my 9-year old granddaughter, headed for the bathrooms. While I was waiting outside the ladies room for my granddaughter to appear somewhere in the mass of prancing women, I began observing all the commotions around me.
The one event that was occurring just down the way from me was a group of perhaps 8 men, and I use that term lightly, all clad in Tampa Bay Rays gear, i.e. shirts, hats, etc. and each had their souvenir cowbell.
I might have forgotten to mention that each man also tightly clasp a 24-ounce plastic cup of their favorite beer in the hand opposite the cowbell. What they were doing was what I believed to be quite bizarre, along with disturbing, embarrassing, etc.
As a group, they stood noisily by and when anyone walked by, man, woman or child, that sported any kind of Red Sox gear, they vigorously shook the cowbells in the faces of the passersby and yelled condescending remarks and vulgarities at them. Obviously, they were looking for a fight.
Thankfully, I got to witness none of that and partially hung my head in shame as I too was wearing a brand new Rays T-Shirt!
Following that, I heard a voice screaming from out of the crowd. I was standing a short distance from a vending cart that sold beer, that magical juice that turns many a good human being into an instant _____________………You fill in the blank.
The screaming voice was that of a woman. She rushed up to the venders and yelled, “STOP SELLING BEER! NO MORE BEER! THIS PLACE IS OUT OF CONTROL AND WE HAVE TO STOP SELLING BEER!
I was relieved when my granddaughter emerged from the ladies room and we made a hasty retreat to our seats hoping to get there unscathed. I informed my daughter of what was going on and also noticed several more things taking place and not taking place around the stadium.
Not taking place were any more guys schlepping containers of ice cold beer around the stadium to sell. Their night was cut short also. Taking place were more fights. It appears to me, although I do not know if this were true, that more St. Petersburg police were called in for backup and to prepare for when the game was over and we had to move in mass through the stadium and out into the streets. I wasn’t looking forward to that at all.
I tried, as difficult as it was, to change my focus back to the game. After all that’s why I came there, right?
The Rays and the Sox have a storied past, one of several bench-clearing brawls. The latest, as I try to recall, was an earlier season episode in Fenway Park when the Rays were visiting. Coco Crisp was hit by a pitch. He charged the mound and a fight ensued. It was Rodney Dangerfield who once said, “I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out!”
Needless to say there has over the past few years been a decent rivalry between the two teams and this three-game series was a great culmination of that rivalry. Coming into the first game, the Rays had a one game lead in the American League East division over the Boston Red Sox. The Rays proceeded to be given a batting clinic and got beaten badly on Monday night, tying the two teams for the lead in the East.
Tuesday’s game was a nail-biter with the Rays eking one out in the bottom of the ninth, leaving last night as the rubber match.
Things got ugly once the alcohol took over and as a fan you begin thinking that the players are sharing the same animosities toward each other as the fans are.
Fortunately for us and I think for stadium security and St. Pete police, the score widen further near the end of the game and many fans began leaving, among them seemed to be more Red Sox fans than Rays fans.
By the time the game ended, my nerves were shot! The noise, the tension among fans and my fretting some about having to walk out of there with my daughter and granddaughter. But I was put at ease by something that I witnessed and something that helped restore in me that America’s favorite pastime was still more than a bunch of drunken bums.
It was the top of the ninth. The Rays had a commanding lead. All they needed were three outs and they would move 2 games up on the Sox. The Rays as always had been playing defensively well. As the last batter for Boston walked up to the plate, the remaining fans rose to their feet in a unison of cheers. I thought the Rays players must enjoy the support, something they haven’t had much of over their short history.
But something happened. The Boston Red Sox first base coach is Luis Alicea. Alicea has a long history of playing baseball in the Major Leagues and actually had a short stint with the Red Sox in the mid 1990s.
When the final out came, it would be expected that most coaches and players of the losing team would begin a long walk back to their dugout and into the secure confines of the locker room. Not Luis Alicea!
As he began to run toward his third base dugout, he turned to the Rays bench beside him and offered the team a brief gesture to the visor of his cap, a nod of the head and a bold thumbs up, a congratulatory gesture wrought with class and sportsmanship.
Thank you Luis Alicea for making my night. You’re a man of class and dignity!
Tom Remington
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[...] Tom Remington wrote a fantastic post today on “Among Drunken Brawls, I Spotted Class”Here’s ONLY a quick extractAs the game went on and the score between the Rays and Sox widened, the amount of alcohol being consumed rose exponentially! The noise level went up and soon, if you took a moment to look around the stadium, you could see security and … [...]
No accounting for hooligans and malcontents. You get this as October looms on the horizon. I’m following NL east GO PHILLIES.
PHILLIES and TAMPA BAY. Might see you there Tom.
You look at where the Rays have come from, our brief history, even what happened last year (a major-league-worst 66-96 record). I’ve mentioned to the guys often, I’m into celebrating. And if we get to that point sooner, we’ll do it in the appropriate way. But for right now, let’s beat the Twins (tonight).”
The Boston fans in the Tropicana Field sellout crowd of 36,048 seemed to show more fight (especially the one arrested and nearly Tasered atop the dugout by police) than the players. And the frustrations mounted, with manager Terry Francona saying the phone in the dugout from the bullpen was actually getting outside calls.
I see sports events the old fashioned way, I read about them. Roman Sports are neat, but in their proper perspective are a distraction from reality. Just think where our country might be had Americans spent time reading Congrssional Globes, Annals, Records, of Congress, instead of becoming consumed with Roman Sports. It sounds like nothing much has changed since my first visit to a Major League Baseball game, I was five years old, it was L.A. and I can’t remember the opponent, it was 42 years ago, my Grandfather had taken me to the game while we visited him, I got my first taste of that disgusting liquid filled with chemical toxins that night, as a drunk fan stumbled and his re-filled huge beer got me square in the face, all of it. Thats the memory I took away from that night. I don’t drink beer either, never did. The TV at home still may be the best seat in the house, course I killed that tell-a-lie-vision black box a long time ago. When the Giants came out of no-where and beat the Pats last year I smelled fix and that was it for me. Even these damn pro sports have a symbolic roman filthy meaning, my heart was broken when it was proven to me.
A good commentary, Tom, and a sad one, at that! I can see why I don’t like crowds and/or drunken crowds…I didn’t realize that they served beer during athletic events! I know at the Florida Gators games, all drinking is prohibited, due to the same situations as you have described…and that’s been the case for maybe ten years or more now, and nobody takes any notice of it anymore. In fact, they have “checkers” at the gate to watch for ANY containers, which may be alcoholic!
What ever happened to people being able to “hold” their liquor? And not in their hands!