• Featured |
  • Burton DeWitt
  • Vin Diec
  • Trevor Freeman
  • Diane M. Grassi
  • Gabe Kahn
  • Ryan McGowan
  • Kris Pollina
  • Matt Waters
  • Ray Yocke
  • -----------
  • Write for SC
  • Get Featured
  • Nominate
• blog |
• Journals

• NFL
• NBA
• MLB
• NHL
• College
• Other

• forums + |
  • Chat Room
  • Message Boards
  • Philly Message Boards
  • Photo Pool
• Submit |
• Help

One Man's Trip to the Ballpark

By Trevor, Section MLB
Posted on Mon May 09 2005 at 6:25 PM EST
More on: (all tags)

by Trevor Freeman

There are two types of brave.  The first type is courageous.  Fighting in war, defying a series of odds, saving a life.  The second type is the "stupid" kind.  Examples would be jumping off the roof into your swimming pool or trying to swipe the bell off the top of Taco Bell.  Wearing an opposing team's hat into Yankee Stadium definitely constitutes the second type of brave.

Now this isn't the first time I have done this.  A few years ago I showed up for Game 2 of the A's-Yankees playoff series wearing an A's jersey and hat.  Even the three friends of mine that I was with (two of whom were Yankee fans) could not stop the heckling I was getting.  Popcorn was thrown at me.  My sexual preference was questioned for the first five innings.  However, this is the kind of thing you expect when you show up at Yankee Stadium not wearing Yankee blue.

Friday was different.

On Friday, nothing happened.  Other than some half-hearted banter from an upstate trio who we became friendly with.  There was nothing.  Not at Billy's or Stan's before the game.  Not during the game.  Not even on the subway ride home when I encountered five A's fans, three of whom were going to all three games at Yankee Stadium and then renting a car to go up to Fenway.  To make it more upsetting if you are a Yankee fan, every A's fan was dressed head to toe in green and yellow.  The capper was that we loudly talked on the subway about how we needed to get two out of three against the Yankees before we headed up to Boston (in hindsight we're the a$$holes now as the A's went out and lost the next two games).

It was then that I came to this realization.  While I am highly annoyed that Oakland isn't in first place right now and my patience is wearing thin with just about every one of our hitters save Mark Kotsay (that goes double for Jason Kendall).  At least I like the vast majority of the players on my team and I haven't become disheartened.  With the Yankees, it's the people they don't like.  Yankee fans seem to be openly pining for the days of Brosius, O'Neill, and Pettitte.  You could hear the anger at the team in the ballpark.  At one point it was real quiet and one guy with a thick Brooklyn accent got up and yelled, "You all suck, every single one of you!"  It was like he bought his ticket just so he could get some in-person venting in at his team that he could not get at home.  In normal years that guy with the thick Brooklyn accent is the one making you question whether or not it was a smart move to wear your A's hat to the game.        

Friday night's game was a matchup of the two winningest regular season teams since 2000.  Both are not playing as well as their fans would like.  It should be an interesting journey for both sides and their fans for the rest of the regular season.  One group has been annoyed with their team's growing pains while the other is upset at the way their highly paid bunch hasn't resembled the passion of prior years.  Will both teams get it together and appease their fan bases?  We shall see.  Lucky for both of us, baseball is a marathon and not a sprint.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to e-mail me at trevor.freeman@realityfanforum.com.