"How am I supposed to let Jeter know how much he sucks with these baby feet on my friggin' back?"
It was a legitimate question. As a Mets fan sitting in the packed bleachers at the House That Ruth Built When He Wasn't Goofy-Faced Drunk, it was my God-given right to be rowdy on a hot New York summer afternoon. After several years of getting dragged to these "Subway Series" interleague games, and after several years of the Yankees corn-holing my team time and time again, the Mets had a lead. A big lead. It was time to be lewd, crude, and an awful guest in someone else's stadium.
Until that damn baby showed up.
The mother and father — early 30s, desperately pretending their social lives weren't over the minute that bundle of joy was delivered — arrived in the bleacher behind me around the fourth inning. Before that, the seats were occupied by a delightful young white teenager who dropped more N-bombs during his 18-outs of cell phone conversations than Jay-Z does in a double album. I was happy to see him move on to a better section, though I wonder if his bitch really is that crazy or if, as was his friend's suspicion, she was just frontin'.
I caught mom, dad, and baby approaching out of the corner of my eye and let out an audible grown. I like to have fun at sporting events, and fun for me involves shouting a few words that I really don't feel comfortable letting fly in front of a 2-year-old girl, let alone her mother (unless she cuts me off in traffic). So I was already feeling muzzled when I felt something on my lower back. I turned to my girlfriend and asked her to identify the object; she replied that the child was on her mother's lap, and had decided to use my spine as a footrest.
"How am I supposed to let [Derek] Jeter know how much he sucks with these baby feet on my friggin' back?"
I didn't intend to say it loud enough for the couple to hear me, but being from Jersey there's really no physical way for me to deliver that line any other way. Within moments, the toddler was done tap-dancing on my kidneys. Within an inning or two, the family had left the bleachers, and I was able to converse like a drunken longshoreman for the rest of the game.
If I did indeed chase them away, should I feel awful? Of course not, because I'm not the one who brought a baby into the bleachers at Yankee Stadium, where jerk-offs like me burn their behinds on metal seats and wait for the right moment to say something smart just to get a rise out of the other team's fans. It's a rule my father made very clear when I was a kid: if you want the family experience, you pay for the lower bowl; if you want the real fan experience, you sit in the cheap seats.
And being that my father was rather ... uh ... "frugal," I spent more time sitting upstairs than Anne Frank.
When I become a father, I'm going to have choices to make when it comes to bringing my kid to a game. Like, for example, would I even bring him or her to a Mets/Yankees or Devils/Rangers game, where passion can quickly turn into punches in the stands? If I did, would I have to sit with the suits to avoid the hooligans? What about if it's a game without that adverse foreign element in the stands, like a Devils/Panthers game? Would I still have to pay to sit downstairs to ensure some family friendliness? Is there even such a thing at a hockey game? How old does a kid have to be to introduce him or her to the glory of the cheap seats?
Looking back on it, my father made the right decision in exposing me to the "real" fans at a young age. It's a different vibe upstairs, and it's a vibe that's directly affected my dedication as a fan. There were situations, during those rivalry games, where I felt a twinge of danger when the guys around us would start going back and forth in a vulgar, aggressive way. But you know what? There actually was a time when there was some legitimate danger and unpredictability in attending a sporting event. But that was before pulsating hip-hop music drowned out the fans during time outs, and before a giant mosquito net prevented fans from catching pucks that went out of play.
You know, the funny part is that the little girl and her parents might have been in the safest part of Yankee Stadium that day: plenty of cops, and outside of my loud mouth there really wasn't a lot of taunting and strident debate between the fan bases. There wasn't even a single fight in the bleachers during what was a dominating win for the hated Mets.
The reason? No more beer.
Either I had forgotten or I just plain missed it, but Yankee Stadium stopped selling beer in the bleachers back in 2000. First the beer vendors stopped coming through the cheap seats, and then all of the concession stands stopped selling brew in the concourse. I imagine local hospitals just got tired of treating bloody Red Sox fans every homestand, so something had to give.
(I always have to chuckle when these stadiums play hardball with beer sales, yet tailgate parties are held unchecked and there's a mile of bars and pubs surrounding the grounds. Talk about passing the buck...)
My best bleacher creature story involves what's now a banned substance in Yankee Stadium's cheap seats. It was 1998 and the Yankees were playing the Padres in the World Series. My friend scored bleacher seats, and I tagged along (without a hint of Mets garb, mind you). Before the game, a woman with a San Diego hat and a cell phone stood up. Raising the phone above her head, she loudly asked the bleacher creatures to say hello to her friend back in San Diego. I'm pretty sure the first thing that hit her was a hot dog. After that, it was anything that wasn't bolted down, including a couple of large $7 cups of beer that saturated her from Padres cap to open-toed shoes. It was the last I saw of her for the rest of the game.
That's what the bleachers, or any other cheap seat, used to be. A place where you wouldn't bring a baby. A place where some dope with a cell phone is going to get more beer thrown her way than a Playmate at a frat party. A place where a loud-mouthed fan of the opposing team doesn't get to say the things this loud-mouthed fan of the opposing team said without at least one threat of physical harm after the game.
On that sunny afternoon in the Bronx, the bleachers had become something I never thought they'd be: safe, sound, and more than a little boring.
Maybe I just need to go back for a Red Sox game.
Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book is "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History." His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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