Let’s talk actions in the stands.
You have paid big bucks to get a ticket and you are at the ballpark, stadium, arena, pitch or venue to watch your team. You dress appropriately for your own agenda.
Now, you can be excused if you are dressing to help your team win. That includes face paint, body paint or mascot costumes. You can manipulate your cap into ralley-cap mode, wear your jersey inside out, hold your cap upsidedown and beg for runs if you want. Whatever it takes to help your team win is excused. Many fans take it to extremes.
Dressing as a mascot and banging on a drum may not be politically correct, depending on the mascot, but bringing disrespect on groups of people, animals or even cartoon characters earns public disdain.
Wearing full Navy Blue and Burnt Orange body paint, shirtless in sub-zero temperatures in December to watch the Bears play the Packers at Soldier Field or sporting Dark Green and Gold while decked out with a cheese head hat at Lambeau Field in January may be foolhardy and poor for the health, but you will get praise from the warmer fans next to you. You can also wear the uniform of any past player or any nostalgic jersey and create any tribute to your team. That is acceptable and acknowledged with applause.
However, there are actions that will gain you ridicule and viral social media attention. Catch a screaming foul line drive barehanded and you will be praised. Give that ball to a wide-eyed kid in a seat nearby and you are a hero. Save a spouse or friend from battle damage at the risk of your own body and you earn approval. Make that same catch by jumping in front of a waiting youth who has his glove stuck out, or wrestle it away from another fan and you are vilified – and rightly so.
Hold a funny or loving sign and you get appreciative nods. Hold an unfavorable or political sign and you are booed.
Now, let’s ignore Jeffrey Maier’s homerun interference grab of a Derek Jeter fly ball in the Yankees vs. Baltimore 1996 playoffs, and Steve Bartman’s foul ball interference of Moises Alou in the Cubs vs. the Marlins 2003 play-offs game. Fan interference is another story for another column. This is about embarrassing actions by fans … actions that live on forever.
Some behavior will get you unwanted attention. In today’s cell phone-cam, drone-cam and very public world in which every action can be filmed and documented, be careful, because what you do in public might be seen by the world within minutes. We live in a cell phone, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok society. There are no secrets. Everything you do can be made public.
Many of these embarrassing acts involve alcohol, but there are proposals accepted and rebuffed in the stands, food-scarfing, nose-picking, yawning during an exciting or boring game, goofy or enthusiastic all-out dancing in the grandstands, shirtless gyrations, soda waterfalls, a belly dance by a fan to celebrate a Loranzo Cain triple at a KC Royals game, voodoo finger routines, anger and seat-punching, hat and program throwing, popcorn avalanches and more, dictated by the flow of a game.
Sometimes, the soon-to-be viral actions have nothing to do with the game. Case in point, at a recent Yankees-Mets game at Yankee Stadium, a fan was caught on cam, hollowing out a ballpark hot dog with a straw and using the repurposed dog as a straw itself, to sip his cold beer. The video was originally captured by the Instagram account @NewYorkNico, and blew up on Twitter after it was reposted by Jomboy Media. The video and subsequent copies reached 3 million views on Twitter in less than two hours. Was this an act of genius or sickness? Either way, this guy is a social media firestorm.
That is one of many … but the most recent. Be aware, that what you do at a game doesn’t stay at a game … it could soon be public property of the world with your face on everyone’s phone or PC and not in a favorable fashion.
Have you ever done anything at a game that you are glad no one ever caught on cam? Let me know at mike.blake@mountvernonnews.com.
