Sunday, July 26, 2009

America's favorite pastime

Baseball.

The boys of summer.

Peanuts and Crackerjack, hot dogs and beer.

Margie bought tickets for herself, me, my Dad, my Bro in-law and my sister to see the Philadelphia Phillies vs. the St. Louis Cardinals, in Philadelphia.

We all met up at the park, had a nice lunch and then got to our seats.




It was hazy, hot and humid but luckily we were sitting on the shady side of the stadium.

My Dad, my sister and Bro In-law are Phillies fans.

Margie is a Cardinals fan.

I'm indifferent. I've never been a fan of baseball. I don't watch it on TV, but I don't mind seeing it live. There isn't much to it really. You sit, eat hot dogs and peanuts, drink beer and chat about this and that. Stand up and clap when your team does well, boo and hiss when the other team does.

America's favorite pastime.

Being at a live game and watching the fans can be more entertaining than the actual game itself. There are the real die hard fans that are decked out in full fan attire (that would be Margie), there are families that come and sit together, Fathers and sons, friends and neighbors...and the occasional "special group" of people.

We had a whole bus load of "special people" sitting in front of us. Now I don't mean special like people that may be handicapped or challenged in any kind of "apparent" fashion. I'm talking about that special group that comes together on a bus, start drinking on the bus and continue drinking all throughout the game. This was a really odd group because you had a mix of trailer park people and frat boys all mixing together. They kept changing seats. A bunch would get up and leave and then a whole new set of people would come in and take their place.

It was a bit bizarre.

My sister and I were enjoying them - they were entertaining...for a while.

Before I continue I need to explain something first. Baseball in the Northeast of the US...especially in NY and NJ has somewhat of a wacky cult following.

I guess you could say that we are "passionate" about our sports and enjoy showing our passion by yelling and screaming and jumping and clapping. You get the idea. In the Northeast, if you walk into a Yankees game wearing a Boston Red Sox hat you are taking a chance with your life. If you go to a Phillies home game wearing the opposing teams hat, shirts whatever - you will be heckled.

Some people are good natured about it. Some are just assholes.

Meet Mr. Asshole:



As soon as he walked in you could tell he was an "over enthusiastic and quite inebriated" fan. He would start clapping for no real apparent reason and wouldn't stop. He would stand up and just stay there blocking every one's view while we were all screaming at him to sit down.

Plain ol' obnoxious, stupid jerk.

As the game went on and the Phillies were kind of giving the Cardinals a whoopin' this guy became more and more vocal.

And then he spotted our lil' Margie sitting there with her Cardinals hat and shirt on and she became his target. He started yelling at her and making fun of Albert Pujols (who is like THE best player in baseball at the moment) insinuating that Pujols takes steroids and aiming all his drunken idiocy on Margie.

Neetzy remarked that she has kids in her high school class that act the same way and she always wondered if they grew out of it.

The answer to that question is: NO!

Mr. Asshole was living proof!

Mr. Asshole's friends were trying to get him to shut up and he even got a warning from Security to behave himself.

He is "special" that is for sure.

And so Mr. Asshole, I dedicate this song to you.

Everybody sing along!!!



We will never forget you!

9 comments:

neetzy said...

What an asshole! We had a great time despite the "human waste" sitting in front of us. Those are the kinds of people that give us Americans a bad name. They were truly "ugly" Americans. (Actually I liked a couple of the trailer park ladies - the one with the "Flying Hawaiian" shirt and the one with the blue shirt in front of her were nice). They had sailor mouths, but were quite entertaining.

dive said...

Hee hee hee!
Glad you all had a good time, notwithstanding the asshole.

neetzy said...

I saw the mugshots of the assholes who killed the guy. I don't think they were our assholes. Both the assailants and the victims were on bus trips.

Shazza said...

Funny to think of them as "our assholes"!

Kat Mortensen said...

He just looks like an A-hole, doesn't he?
We went to a soccer match a few weeks ago at a big stadium in Toronto (this was a big deal for us, since we rarely go to sports events). We were fortunate that the stadium was penalized for serving alcohol to a minor the week before and was not allowed to serve beer at this particular game. So...the a-holes were kept relatively quiet. I don't think I could take it with a bunch of jerks in front of me. I'd probably walk out.

Kat

Shazza said...

I found out later that this particular asshole...who was really, REALLY drunk actually was served more alcohol and then dropped on the people sitting in front of him.

I really hope he doesn't breed.

Scout said...

I can't stand watching baseball on TV but I love the games. I could care less what's going on in the diamond, but the stands are a great place for people watching.

We used to have season tickets behind home plate for Cleveland Indians game, but we haven't been to game all season this year. The Indians suck, I've been told.

Kari Hultman said...

I saw a professional baseball game once. Once. It was the longest 5 hours of my life.

Had I been with you, I would have been highly amused and laughing at the *sshole the entire time. He'd have probably kicked MY *sshole because of it.

Louise said...

After their slow start, the Philadelphia Phillies are starting to turn it on but they’ve always been my favourite teams in MLB. I really got lost when I was looking for a ticket & finally I found it at a good price so let me share it with u guys:
http://www.ticketsinventory.com/mlb/