Panic Spreads as Fans Drink Beer!!!

“Concerns over alcohol consumption at the ballpark have triggered complaints from some fans and Fenway neighborhood activists who say home games have been marred by rowdy behavior. The recent altercation between a fan and New York Yankees right fielder Gary Sheffield has drawn attention to a problem that some say has grown worse in recent years.” - The Boston Globe

It’s times like these that I love the Globe; right down to its elitist, left-wing anti-Irish Catholic heart. Here in one paragraph, it manages to bring together three of my favorite topics:
1. Baseball
2. Beer
3. How much everyone is full of crap. The editors of The Globe especially.

That the folks on Morrisey Blvd. were able to blend these three magical elements together in one article (“Sale of beer rising sharply at Fenway Park”, April 24, 2005) is like The Perfect Storm for Barstool columnists, with The Globe as Billy Tyne, haplessly sailing into the teeth of a monster.

Look, anyone who puts forth the hypothesis that we’re witnessing the fall of civilization won’t get an argument from me. I’ve been watching it closely, and TiVo-ing it so I can watch it again later. But I’ve got news for the “Fenway neighborhood activists,” “some fans” and The Globe: the problem with society isn’t people who like a beer at the ballgame. It’s you.

You shrill, self-righteous, crusading, mamby-pamby alarmists who live in mortal fear that someone, somewhere is having a good time. You killjoys who are forever climbing on soapboxes and yelling “The solution to all the world’s problems is to state them very loudly, which I will now proceed to do…”

You are all buzz-kills who turn every small event into a crisis. Danger is everywhere! No one is safe! Something must be done! Who will protect our children?!!! And the local TV newscasts are following right along with this non-story, turning out claptrap like “Beer, Baseball and Bad Behavior: A Special Report.“ This is what TV news does: create emergencies where none exist. These Chicken Littles are in the crisis business. If they do a report about how “Kids’ scooters are popular again,” you know “Scooter Accidents Rising: Are your kids safe?” can’t be far behind. (You might have noticed the sidewalks littered with the broken bodies of child scooter enthusiasts.)

Granted, I’m not as smart as your typical “Fenway neighborhood activist,” but has it occurred to anyone that maybe beer sales at the park are on the rise at the same rate as, say, ticket sales? They’ve added more seats and sold out every game since early 2003. Wouldn’t it make sense that with more people in the park, the sale of everything would go up? Still, I’m looking forward to Channel 7’s “Coke, Cotton Candy and Corpulent Kids: A Special Report.”

Which leads me to this notion that beer sales, in the words of one Fenway detail cop, have spiraled “totally out of control” and the old ballyard is being run by an army of unruly drunkards. Among logicians, an argument like this is known as “petitio principii,” literally “begging the question.” It means to state something as accepted fact rather than proving it through argument. “Fans are drunker, therefore they act up more” is a hell of a lot easier for The Globe to report than actually having to add up the number of beers sold and dividing by the number of total fights in the stands.

I don’t need statistics to tell me what I already know: the crowds at Fenway are the best behaved they’ve ever been. Period. I was a teenager in the late 70’s and at minimum I went to a dozen games a year. Back then, watching the game was something you did between fights in the stands. Twice an inning you stood on your seat so you could see the guys in the next section beat the snot out of each other. The cloud of pot smoke that hung over right field was thicker than Tom Arnold. The dope smokers in the bleachers were the only group of stoners in history to act angry and aggressive. When I was 14, I saw the guy in front of me slowly empty a full beer into the hair of the lady in front of him and then work it in with his fingers like he was shampooing her. Both he and she stayed to the end of the game.

Anyone who ever went to a game pre-2000 will tell you the same thing: it’s much, much better now than it ever was back then. But that won’t stop the professional worry lobby. The Globe quotes a licensing board member who says he’s had a number of complaints (What number? One? One is a number.) from people who “couldn’t wait for them to shut off the beer. They were rowdy and the profanities were going.” Of course, rowdiness and profanities never existed in a major league park prior to April of 2005. Sure the Royal Rooters started a riot at the 1903 World Series, but they were well-behaved and sober. Ty Cobb went into the stands and beat up a crippled guy, but he was nice about it. And fans yelled stuff at Jackie Robinson, but never swear words. The worst he ever heard from fans was “I assure you that our team will get the better of your Dodgers today, Good Sir.” Saying that this season Red Sox fans invented rowdy behavior this season is like saying Bill Clinton invented oral.

Of course, The Globe mentions the Gary Sheffield affair. Out of 37,000 people, two screwed up. Idiot B threw a beer. Idiot A gave Sheffield a Three Stooges-like “nosey.” Both were out of line (especially since they could‘ve cost Jason Varitek a two-run triple). Both were ejected. Order was restored, “Go back to your lives, citizens. There’s nothing more to see here.” But to listen to the fallout from that game, you’d think that anarchy ensued, lawlessness ruled the day, and you had to be Snake Plissken to get out of the park and back to Yawkey Way alive.

I took my family to a Sox-Blue Jays game on the last homestand, and I’m happy to report we lived to tell the tale. Even though it was packed and most of the people around us had beers, the crowd was better behaved than you’d see at a typical town council meeting. Protective as she is, my lovely wife never came close to yelling, “There’s danger all around us! Quick! Get the kids into the Panic Room!”

So, I hate to disappoint the stupid and easily offended among us. I’ll grant you that the world is going to hell. But Fenway Park isn’t the hand basket.