The title of this post may come as a surprise to longtime readers of this blog who know that I’ve often felt like an outsider when it comes to sports, never quite sharing the enthusiasm as the majority of our society. But yesterday, with my October tour postponed (a mixed blessing, providing some much needed time to rest), I decided at the last minute to join a dozen friends and do something I wouldn’t normally think to do: catch a game by the New York Mets.
Walking from the #7 train to CitiField on a sunny Saturday, we merged with a much larger crowd of thousands of baseball fans, for whom this trek is a routine. I suddenly thought about how my life consists of many things that are so ‘abnormal’ to most- tour buses, arena stages, nightclubs, recording studios, and overseas flights to such faraway places as Tokyo, Beijing, and Seoul; places in which I’ve tasted such things as sea urchin, frogs legs and even crickets, respectively. Yet here I was, witnessing something so ‘normal’ to life in the United States, a baseball game– and along with it, the consumption of beer, hot dogs and peanuts. It felt like I was visiting an exotic foreign land, watching a strange native ritual.
As we entered the stadium, my eyes taking in the deep green field under a crisp blue sky, I was revisited by a distant childhood memory: being taken to see the Oakland A’s by my father, a respected sociologist. We would sit and watch mostly in silence-an example that I was supposed to follow. Every now and then, he’d point out some mundane details of the game as if he were a panelist on one of those Sunday morning talk shows, such as ‘This Week With David Brinkley.’ My father’s sports commentary was as interesting to me as his dinner party discourses on tort laws, constitutional legislation and appellate briefings.
A few seats away, I’d hear the voices of the baseball hooligans-loud, unruly fans, people with whom we would never share the same airspace if not for the cross-pollination of a public sporting event. These louts shouted things like “My grandma, rest her soul, coulda pitched better than you!!” “Yo! If they paid ME a million bucks, I’d better able to catch the freakin’ ball!” “Hey! How about another beer over here?! ” My dignified, professorial father just ignored them, as if they were rogues to be tolerated out of necessity but avoided at all costs.
Well here it is many years in the future, the rogues are still there and this nut in the photo is a perfect example. At yesterday’s game, a security guard had to come over and tell this guy to sit the hell down. This boisterous, beer-guzzling loudmouth is named Frankie- he’s the quintessential baseball hooligan. He’s also one of my closest friends.
Upon hearing that a big block of seats was available through his job (he’s on the audio crew of several trash TV talk shows), it was Frankie who promptly placed a hold on the tickets. Knowing that I and so many of my friends are always busy and pressed for time, he convinced a whole big group of us to drop what we were doing and spend a beautiful Saturday afternoon together at the ball park. Apprehensive at first, we couldn’t have been more thankful upon arrival.
Frankie is someone who goes out of his way to help others, never asks for anything in return, has a rock solid work ethic, shows up on time, never makes a promise he can’t keep, does everything he says he’s going to do, makes everyone around him laugh and would take a bullet for his friends.
I’m not saying there aren’t some sports hooligans who cross the line, are intolerable and truly the stuff of my parents’ nightmares. What I am saying is that you can’t judge a persons character simply because they display behavior that is loud, brash or in any other way different than yours. Frankie, along with a few others in our group, formed a team of rowdies that no doubt stood out as the loudest bunch at New York’s Citifield yesterday- no easy feat. But all of them are nice, genuinely good, honest, fun people. It was the best time I’ve ever had a ballgame and I was proud to be sitting with them. Perhaps it’s the heavy metal side of me that prefers being around those who are unruly and out of the ordinary.
All through yesterdays game, I kept thinking back to those Oakland A’s games of my youth, being expected to limit my own behavior and social interactions to the types of people my parents were-demure, reserved and unassuming. I’d felt so constricted. Meanwhile, a few seats away were the beer-guzzling loudmouths who brazenly expressed themselves freely, had no self-consciousness whatsoever and didn’t care what anyone else thought. I knew I wasn’t supposed to think this, but couldn’t help it: those baseball hooligans always seemed to be having a much better time than we were. Secretly, I’d always wanted to get up, excuse myself from my parents and go sit with them. Now, all these years later, I finally have.
