Category Archives: Sports

Baseball, NYC

Unreasonable Fan Entitlement Theater, Brought to You by the Caesar’s Club

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My trip to CitiField earlier this week has to be one of my weirdest ever. (Though it was also highly enjoyable for other reasons, which you shall read about on the interwebs very soon [/tease].) The sparsely distributed crowd contained a disturbingly high concentration of enemy partisans. I’ve been to a bunch of Subway Series games where the ratio of Yankees fans to Mets fans was 1:1, and where loud sections cheering LET’S GO YAN-KEES! would have an angry counterpoint of LET’S GO METS! But I’ve never been to a game where Mets fans were completely out-shouted by the opposition. That happened this evening, and it was disturbing to hear what little crowd there was erupt with each Giant hit or Tim Lincecum strikeout.

However, it’s not Giants fans’ fault for showing up if Mets fans won’t. The situation was a little annoying, but considering how the Mets have played so far and the weather that evening (temps in the low 50s with insane winds to match), it was, sadly, unsurprising. And the Giants fans were simply cheering for their team; none that I saw crossed the line into outright assholery. They were far from the worst people in the park.

For that, I had to go into the Caesar’s Club. This is the section behind homeplate that has a large bar, lounge area, and many higher-end food stands, with a TV in every conceivable spot showing patrons the game. This section is only open to folks with tickets in certain sections, which I possessed (brag). I used the facilities there, and that’s where I found the worst fan of the evening, and possibly ever.

Almost all of the bathrooms at CitiField have piped audio from the WFAN radio call of the game, so you won’t miss a thing while you answer nature’s call. This one was no exception, but it also had a large wall-mounted TV, which was tuned to a Bulls playoff game.

I’m gathering this whole scene all at once as I enter. Along with it, a very large man covered in head-to-toe Mets gear. Hat, jacket, jersey, might have even had Mets sweats on, too. The large man gestured to the TV in this annoyed, harassed way and complained, in typical New Yorker fashion, “You believe this? 50 fuckin TVs out there and you gotta come in here to watch basketball.”

I was baffled by this outburst, for so many reasons. First off, this guy was, again, completely decked out in Mets gear. Unless someone was forcing him to do so at gunpoint, it’s safe to assume he’s a fan. It’s also safe to assume he wasn’t dragged along by a friend, relative, spouse, etc. He made a conscious decision to come to this game and to declare his fanhood via his outfit. If he was that annoyed about missing the Bulls game, why didn’t he just say home?

Secondly, yeah, what jerks the Mets are, forcing you to watch the game they’re playing and not giving you the option of viewing a game in a completely different sport that doesn’t involve any local teams! The nerve!

It just goes to show how quickly fans can go from being underserved to entitled. Shea Stadium had almost no amenities to speak of. There were a few monitors at concession stands to keep you up to date about what was going on in the game, but they were few and far between, especially on the upper deck. The concessions themselves were limited almost exclusively to sausage and peppers, hot dogs, and hamburgers, none of which were very good, and which could only be washed down with terrible beer-swill like Bud or Coors Light (though if you were willing to hunt for it, you could find a stand that had Guinness or Brooklyn on draft–as long as that stand was open that day, which it often wasn’t).

In order to enjoy anything else, you had to go to the field level. But you could only go to the field level if you had a field level ticket. No one else was allowed, not even to patronize the concessions. Despite being such a dump, Shea had rigorously enforced caste system.

For all the other issues it might have, CitiField is light years apart from Shea in terms of what it offers fans. And yet, the more you offer people, the more some people want. The Mets could have give this guy his own private in-seat TV and a pair of headphones, like his own Jet Blue flight, and he would complain about the sound.

It reminds me of Louis CK’s bit about how advances in technology have only made people expect more and brought zero happiness. It also reminded me of my very first trip to CitiField. I saw people wandering the Caesar’s Club almost dumbfounded with awe over all the choices. Now, two years later, the Mets are jerks because you can’t watch the NBA in their plush lounge that serves sushi and exotic rums.

This just in: people are assholes!

Baseball, Politics Schmolitics

America Owes Curt Schilling

If you ask me, we did not deal with Osama bin Laden’s body properly. What, nobody asked me? Whatever, never stopped me before.

From top to bottom, this operation was handled all wrong. Look, I know these were Navy SEALs, some of the deadliest, most highly trained operatives on the planet, but I used to throw baseballs, okay? So I think I know what I’m talking about.

For instance, from all the reports I’ve read so far, not one mentions any of these operatives delivering a “kicker” line before sending Osama to kingdom come. Not even a “Message from Uncle Sam” or “Special delivery courtesy of the red, white, and blue!” If anyone had consulted me, I’ve got a 300-page Word document filled with such phrases, ranging from punny to ironic to righteously indignant. I have one for any conceivable scenario. If we found him on the moon, I would’ve said “The Eagle has landed–on your motherfucking face!”

Another failure of imagination: They didn’t booby trap his house, Death Wish 3 style, so when he tried to flee the scene he could be whacked in the face with a board filled with nails. At the very least, his demise could have been far more humiliating. For all their skills with the deadly arts, these Navy SEALs didn’t think to shove a hand grenade up his poop chute? Is this where our tax dollars are going?

So no, I don’t give so-called President Obama any credit for this. I agree with my good friend Rush Limbaugh; Obama acted like he was responsible for this operation just because he approved it and gave the kill order and monitored it from start to finish. It’s amazing–some people have to make everything about them, don’t they?

And don’t get me started on the Muslim burial thing. Honoring other people’s religious traditions, ugh, it makes me sick. I think we should have desecrated the body. And when I say we, I mean me. I think America owed it to me, a millionaire athlete who was nowhere near New York or Washington DC on September 11th, to exact my own personal revenge on someone who once made me nervous to fly.

Look, those are the rules. When you kill the bad guy, you get to do bad stuff to his corpse. Sure, it might not be “politically correct,” but that’s what war is like. At least it is from what I’ve gathered from Tom Clancy novels. Prime example: Mussolini, hung upside down. Now there’s a desecration you can set your watch to!

There are some who say that mutilating his body would have incited riots and endangered hundreds of thousands of American troops stationed overseas. Well, that’s a risk they’ll just have to take. What are we paying them for, anyway?

That’s why I’m leading a team of the world’s best deep sea divers to retrieve Bin Laden’s body. We’re renting a bathysphere and we’re gonna comb the ocean floor until we find that bastard’s body. Then we’re gonna bring it back to America and I’m gonna pose with it on a pier like it’s a huge marlin I just landed. Then I’m gonna hand out baseball bats so people can whack it like a piñata. Signature Curt Schilling bats, only $175 a pop.

And then I’m gonna fly a fighter jet and shoot all the other bad guys. Pew-pew! Pew-pew! Ack-ack-ack-ack! Nyow!

Football

NFL Draft Night: What to Watch For!

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  • The NFL has provided free pre-draft entertainment for attendees. It can be found within a 15-block radius of Radio City Music Hall, where sweaty out of towners in Browns and Rams jerseys struggle to adjust to the local New York custom of Walking to Places.
  • Cam Newton remains the consensus favorite to be the #1 pick, but teams may have soured on him after he appeared on that idiotic Jon Gruden QB Camp monstrosity.
  • NFL insiders think this might be the year someone finally decides to take Chris Berman out.
  • Rumor has it Jets coach Rex Ryan may make an appearance to join Gang Green fans in hurling obscenities at whoever the team drafts.
  • NFL rules state that a team must draft the player commissioner Goodell reads at the podium, even if he reads the wrong name by mistake. That’s how the Cardinals wound up drafting Marisa Tomei in 1990.
  • Four millionaire sportscasters have been given an all-expenses-paid trip to Manhattan just so they all can say “This guy knows how to play the game” three times an hour. Just thought you’d like to know that.
  • By federal law, all players eligible for the draft must allow ESPN cameras into their home and provide the entire crew with a reasonable lunch-type meal. Simply putting out snacks is not acceptable (see ESPN vs. Tavaris Jackson and Good Guys Catering, 2006).
  • The draft concludes on Sunday when “Mr. Irrelevant” is chosen, and Mel Kuiper is placed back into his cryogenic freeze chamber for another 11 months.
  • Remember when nobody picked Brady Quinn for, like, forever? That was hilarious.
  • Roger Goodell is completely okay with spending money on this self-love fest while giving nothing to catastrophically concussed retired players. Just thought you’d like to know that, too.
  • ESPN’s broadcast day will be given over to post-draft wrap-up and debriefing until LeBron dunks something or the next Yankees-Red Sox game, whichever comes first.