Mid-October I attended a postseason baseball game, an 18-inning affair between the Seattle Mariners and the Houston Astros. Scoreless contest until the top of the 18thwhen Jeremy Pena, Astros shortstop, hit a solo homerun. Denied in the bottom half of the inning, Seattle lost the game, but, as a consolation, notched their first postseason appearance after a 21-year drought. A game for the history books, it was hard to walk away too disappointed.
What stays with me, though, was not the superb pitchers’ duel and the drama of an extraordinary contest. No, it was the off-putting tone, the raucous behavior of fans, the beer-buzzed and obscene invectives shouted at the opposing players and at Astro’s fans, the insane loudness of it all, and especially the public address system’s brainless noise played at ear-shattering levels that encouraged 40,000 people to stand and flaunt muscle spasms as if they were in a mosh pit or were afflicted with St. Vitus’ Dance. Projected on the big screen, the blatant nonsense was captured by roving camera crews focused on the most flamboyant shows of self-abasement. The spectacle of fans making jackasses of themselves filled the intervals between innings. Good Lord, gyrating people, what has happened to America’s pastime?
I freely admit that I was reared as a buttoned-down Lutheran in Norman Rockwell’s America. Our baseball games were accompanied with organ music and a matter-of-fact announcer who said things like, “And now batting, number 12 and playing right field….” People smoked cigars and sipped two-dollar beers. We sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” during the seventh inning stretch, but no one stood and flapped their arms as if having a seizure. No one screamed at us to stand up and lip-sync the lyrics to the latest ditty of ungrammatical babel. We weren’t encouraged to scream, “Let’s Go,” as if that meant some rational destination. No, the only obstreperous sounds came from the organist when our team was mounting a rally, and then the climbing chords were merely a minor enhancement, nothing like the skyrockets and bass thumping that filled the whole stadium district of Seattle recently. If I sound as if I am guilty of micro-aggressions, I plead guilty. Moreover, I confess guilt to major aggressions because civility has found the ballpark wanting.
What struck me most were the discourtesies, the loutish conduct that is now standard fan behavior. At one point in the game, thousands of fans began chanting “Fuck-ing Cheat-ers” when an Astro hitter entered the batting box. E-gad. Really, folks? A few rows behind us, an Astro fan waved a “Hit it Here” sign, so the guy in front of me stood up and flourished his middle finger. Nice touch, fella. No, such behaviors are not all in good fun. They are assaultive and not okay. Societal discourtesies and outsized profane displays of disrespect for opponents left me with ambivalent feelings about attending future games, not only at baseball stadia but at all major sporting events except for golf and tennis, games that do not encourage boisterous fan clapback.
Baseball remains America’s pastime; however, what was once a pastoral and relaxing setting for a game the whole family might enjoy now reflects a tone that is obnoxious and uncivil.