Fan Etiquette 102: Millennium UpdateDave Paisley

Last year I wrote a little article about the niceties of attending ballgames in the nineties, and how to be the most obnoxious fan you can be, if that is indeed your goal. Now, I'm sure that that's not the goal of our faithful strikethree.com readership, but it does seem to be the case for a growing proportion of attendees at ballgames.

Last year I published my own guide on how to be the most annoying fan you can be, which unfortunately was compiled from my own personal experience. On the receiving end, that is, not the giving end. I thought maybe it was time for a quick review and update for the new millennium. So once again, here are the top ten ways to be a cutting edge boorish fan of the new millennium.

10) Buy tickets as far from an aisle as possible, thereby guaranteeing your subsequent boorish behavior will affect as many other fans as possible.

9) Get tanked up as much as possible before the game so as to maximize the required number of trips to the bathroom. With a steady consumption of Bud Lite (Miller Lite is a reasonable, though equally pallid alternative) through the game, you may be able to reach beer Nirvana, where you have to "go" once an inning. This has the extra advantage of causing additional drunken stumbling, which can injure or maim more innocent fans as you cut your swath to the aisle.

8) Arrive at the game in the middle of the home first inning and insistently demand that everyone sitting down trying to watch the game get up to let you get to your seats. Bonus points if you can elbow someone in the chest or step on their toes, double points if you can do it while the home team star player is at bat, triple points if he homers and none of the people you stomped on saw him hit the ball.

7)  Bring your tanked up bachelor party to the game and buy everyone a beer each inning. Bonus points to the first person to kick his beer over so it flows down the rows in front of you to soak as many items stowed under seats as possible.

6) Bring your whiny three year old twins to the game. Deprive them of their afternoon nap so they can get all cranky and start whining, "Can we go home now?" in the second inning. Bonus points for every inning you can stand to keep them at the game after the fourth. Double bonus points if you can get them to rhythmically kick the backs of the seats in front.

6a) Bring your disinterested five year old to the game and have them stand in your lap, creating the effect of Andres the Giant sitting in your seat. This effectively blocks the view of a dozen or more patrons behind you. Extra points if the kid is cute (NB: Pepsi girl lookalikes are not cute) so as to discourage cussing by those blocked patrons.

5) Bring a big card sign, banner, pennant or foam #1 finger and wave it whenever a home team batter is at the plate. Bonus points for hoisting it just as the pitcher is delivering the ball. Double bonus points for maximizing the angular coverage by waving it in the most annoying way possible.

4) Yap aimlessly throughout the between inning breaks, and then decide you have to go to the bathroom or concession stands just as the first batter of the inning steps to the plate. Bonus points if the aimless yapping is about how some home town scrub is a great "RBI guy" or "clutch hitter."

3) Two words - air horn. Or here's two other words - cow bell. Use these to either make people around you jump out of their skins (air horn) or annoy them to death with the Chinese water torture of the "tink-tink-tink" of the cowbell.

2) Get voice training lessons so you can be one of those people that can hit 150 db with your unaided voice and use it to heckle the home town superstar for "not hustling." Bonus boorish points if you work in some profanity or racial epithets.

And the single most boorish thing you can do to be an obnoxious, annoying fan of the nineties:

1. Knock little kids to the ground when foul balls come your way.

And our new co-leader (sadly derived form personal experience at a Mariners -Red Sox game):

1a) Let's say it's a close game, and the home team has the bases loaded with one out. The batter at the plate is the home town star, say Alex Rodriguez. The let's say that he bangs a sharp grounder to short. Do you:

1. Lean forward and enjoy the play as it develops?
2. Leap to your feet as soon as the ball is hit, blocking the view of the two rows behind you?

The answer, of course, is b). It's especially effective if the play is very exciting where, say, the shortstop has a little trouble fielding the ball, makes the toss to second, whereupon the runner at first comes sliding in hard to break up the possible double play, but succeeds beyond his wildest dreams and causes the second baseman to drop the ball, resulting in no outs being made, allowing one run to score and keeping the bases loaded. Cool play, huh? Well, I wouldn't know, because some jackass the size of Uranus blotted out my view for the critical 3.7 seconds the play took to happen.

Extra bonus points if you can make a big "Who me?" innocent face if and when anyone complains about your eclipsoid behavior.

So there you have it -- a quick review and a few extra ways to behave boorishly. What more could you want?

OK, so there's a quick tour of walk data from last year. Any thoughts?

about the author

Dave Paisley enjoys going to ballgames quite a lot. Especially sitting in the front row of the upper deck where only 100 ft. tall giants can interfere with his view. Commiserate with him at drdjp@strikethree.com.