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Baseball Primer Newsblog— The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
This is the most classless thing I’ve seen since Jonathan Kozol went classless!
In Buster Olney’s blog today , he quotes Washington Post writer Adam Kilgore, who emailed with Jayson Werth. “After walking off the field feeling nauseous knowing my wrist was broke and hearing Philly fans yelling ‘You deserve it,’ and, ‘That’s what you get,’ I am motivated to get back quickly and see to it personally those people never walk down Broad Street in celebration again,” Werth wrote to Kilgore.
Look, I don’t like to criticize fans of specific teams. I think most fans are pretty much the same: You support your team when it wins and you don’t when it loses. Obviously, Philadelphia fans have a bit of a reputation. I’ve argued with friends who are Phillies fans that I was a little dismayed that fans apparently booed Ryan Howard as he lay in a crumpled heap after grounding out to end the Division Series loss to the Cardinals; they insist they were just booing the team. And maybe it was just a few bad apples yelling at Werth, and not fair to indict an entire fan base. And, yes, we’ve seen fans in ballparks across the country rip opposing players. I’ve seen Mariners fans boo A-Rod and toss dollar bills at him, years after he left Seattle. I’ve heard Yankees fans yell unmentionable things at opposing players.
But ripping a player as he leaves the field with a serious injury—a player who once helped you win a World Series!—is pretty classless. Phillies fans do a great job supporting their team. I’ve never been to a park where so many fans wore team jerseys and shirts to the game. They’ve led the NL in attendance the past two seasons and lead again. Phillies fans are passionate and care. But that wasn’t the best way to channel that passion.
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1. Esoteric throws a 'hard slider' Posted: May 08, 2012 at 12:51 PM (#4126409)Normally, this story would be written about a visiting player getting crapped on by the home fans (and the headline "in Philly" implies such a thing). In this case, it was Werth's own ballpark and he was able to hear (presumably) Philly fans treating him poorly as he left the field. That's kind of unusual.
Oh, Ravecc just said that. Well, it's true. I also admit being kind of shocked.
Unusual if your home park is Fenway, Yankee Stadium, or a few others. Wasn't even unusual in the 80s to hear NY fans drown out LA fans both parks.
Yes there are people like that in every town, but you know there are always going to be the outliers, Philly is an outlier in the bad direction, some other town is likely an outlier in the "good" direction.
In most towns the outright low life scum probably composes no more than 5% of the general fanbase, in Philly it's probably like 7.5%, in some town it's probably only 2.5%.
My high-school years were spent going to games at the Vet, which was a tough crowd, especially if you were Mike Schmidt and you'd just struck out. I've been to CBP once – the week before last – and got no special impression at all. (Except of a lot of people enjoying food and drink in Ashburn Alley, out of sight of the game.) The Phillies lost miserably to the Cubs the night I went (4/27), and I didn't hear a single boo. The only behavior I found a little surprising was the pattern of leaving. In Arlington, fans tend to leave at half-inning marks: their kids've had enough, the game is sewn up, they want to beat traffic, whatever, fair enough. In Philly this time, the Cubs added insurance runs late, and after each Cub hit, another five hundred fans would stand up and leave. Perhaps a form of mute booing ... even so, a pretty mild expression of displeasure. Anyway, nothing like the stereotype, or the good old days either.
I was at the game. The crowd, in general, was primarily Nationals fans- I'd estimate 75%-25%, relative to an easy 50-50 split at Phillies games at Nationals Park recently.
But a couple of factors:
(1) By far the most vocal contingent of Phillies fans were camped out in right field- presumably to target Werth. They were taunting him earlier in the game and from my seats down the first base line, you could see Werth gesturing back to them.
(2) When Werth got injured, the Nationals fans got very quiet (as you might expect when one of your best players is seriously injured). So it's not surprising that Werth was able to clearly hear a couple of jackass hecklers.
In what conversation would the word ever come up here as anything other than the rude scatological insult?
Philadelphia has a serious inferiority complex regarding New York, and to some lesser extent other eastern seaboard cities. My anecdote: I was in central city Philly on a business trip. I arrived at the office building and was making small talk with the lobby guard while waiting for my host to come down and escort me in. Suddenly he shouts "Holy crap, look at that!" nodding towards a woman walking across the lobby.
"Huh?"
"Don't you know who that is?"
"No..."
"That's the anchor on [some local news]. Must be something important going on in the building."
"Oh... I wouldn't know, I'm from New York, just took the train here."
In a completely serious and somewhat pissed voice he goes "Oh, you New York snobs are too good for us and our tv, right?" No thought that New York wouldn't even get Philly television, he just jumped right away to the instinctual thought that a New Yorker would be dissing Philadelphia.
(as Stewie writes \"#########\" on Brian's grave)Stu: That's not really appropriate, Stewie.
Stewie: Of course it is, I loathe that know-it-all flea-bitten mutt!
Stu: No, it's just that the meaning of that word has changed ever since President #########
In all fairness, Felipe Lopez deserved it.
That was actually TLR.
I spent a few years living in Philly during the mid-90s and can confirm that this was absolutely the case at that time.
EDIT: Just like there are probably St. Louis fans who really buy into the "greatest fans" thing and feel like they are being true Cardinals fans by embracing that. Or some Cubs, Mets, Red Sox, Yankees fans buy into whatever the stereotypes of their fan bases are and use it to reinforce their identity as fans. Off the top of my head I can't think of what Jays fans are stereotyped as, so I'm not sure if it applies to me...
naw, it was a young girl but its OK she was a philly fan too.
To be crystal clear, the victim was the young girl, not the culprit.
EDIT: Of all the visiting team fans who descend on Nats Park, the Phillies fans are by a wide margin the most obnoxious. Having said that, the overwhelming majority are pleasant.
Overly friendly lumberjack Mounties.
Yeah, he hated Rasmus, but did seem to love Felipe Lopez. He let him play entirely too much.
He deserved heckling, sure, but not the racist remarks I heard hurled at him.
Exactly, anyone who pretends different is lying to themselves....but..
Seems about right(numbers may not be accurate of course, but the sentiment is) Philly fans are the outlier for the bad fans. There is no other way to objectively look at it. The vast majority of their fans are good fans, and I can easily see that they are at the higher(highest) end of passion as a group, but conversely that also leads to some rather ugly individuals(small groups).
Who get themselves all ###### up on hockey.
Also, woo Devils!
Those are pretty good, though it should probably be Gord Downie rather than Bryan Adams. He's not quite as far gone as Celine Dion, Justin Beiber or Nickelback, but Adams leans more towards embarassment than national treasure. I'm not sure who would be the ideal...for my generation Downie probably does a good job, though I know my mom and many of her generation would happily bow to the will of Anne Murray. I wonder who the candidates for "National Treasure" in Canada would be. In order to qualify you have to be almost universally respected by Canadians...
Romeo Dallaire (seems a bit paradoxical to select a general, but he's not exactly a conventional military man)
For musicians, Downie or Leonard Cohen
I suppose Wayne Gretzky is an obvious choice
Is David Suzuki too controversial a figure? Or do I just happen to know a lot of anti-environmentalist folks.
Tommy Douglas, Peter Gzowski or Terry Fox would be good choices if not for the obvious handicap of no longer being alive
Perhaps Donald Sutherland with his family connection to Tommy.
My personal dark horse I'd put forward: Sarah Polley!
David Suzuki and Polley are not universally beloved.
Neil Young. Joey Jeremiah. Bubbles.
I always had the impression that Kerry Fraser got a lot more hate over this than Gretzky.
Great handle; from now on whenever jays fans are referenced I think we should use OFLM as the appropriate abreviation
I think I can be overly-friendly...though I believe the technical term is "pushover" or perhaps "doormat". I've never been formally trained in lumberjacking, though I have worn plaid jackets all my life and thoroughly enjoy chopping wood at the cottage. Also, my grand-father was a forester and taught me how to sharpen pencils with an axe. I do not qualify as a Mountie at all as I've never ridden a horse, and I very rarely get my man.
EDIT: On Gretzky: I was trying to not let the fact that I'm a Leafs fan influence my picks...though I suppose Leaf fans make up quite a large slice of Canadians, so it's not exactly an unvalid perspective.
I'm impressed that you have managed to expunge Alanis Morissette from your mind.
I know far too many of my compatriats who actually like her.
Though, full disclosure, I like Bryan Adams' "Run to You" more than I should, nobody's perfect.
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