There needs to be accountability for the truth. I don’t care if you’re the president of the Red Sox Nation, you need to be held accountable!
What in the world is Bobby Valentine going to say about this? So far, he has tweaked the likes of Terry Francona, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and others with his rapier wit. Now, he might be on the verge of sparring with a man who owns the biggest arsenal of guns and fishing spears in Major League Baseball.
Tampa Bay Rays slugger Luke Scott, who not 48 hours ago confined his enemies to “criminals and communists,” forgot one. Fans of the Olde Towne Teame, the Boston Red Sox.
Scott, reminiscing about his time sitting inured in the Baltimore Orioles clubhouse watching the Red Sox collapse and the Rays rise up against the Yankees on the final day of the 2011 season, said his teammates were pulling for Tampa Bay all of the way. Why was he, MLB.com asked? Because Scott really dislikes Red Sox fans.
“Just their arrogance,” Scott said. “The fans come in and they take over the city. They’re ruthless. They’re vulgar. They cause trouble. They talk about your family. Swear at you. Who likes that? When people do that, it just gives you more incentive to beat them. Then when things like [the last game of last season] happen, you celebrate even more. You go to St. Louis—classiest fans in the game. You do well, there’s no vulgarity. You know what? You don’t wish them bad.”
Repoz
Posted: February 29, 2012 at 09:46 PM |
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1. Dale Sams Posted: February 29, 2012 at 10:12 PM (#4071525)Edit: I've only ever seen Sox games in TB, KC and Texas. They do dominate the stadium in KC, but I've never seen any of the things he describes there...and they ain't taking over Rangers Ballpark.
I saw them in TB too. The 2 biggest chants during the game were "Let's go Red Sox", and "Yankees Suck". That second one really rattled the blue hairs.
It was 2008 when I saw them. The first series. Sox got swept and there was a fairly vocal TB contingent...and those GD cowbells.
I resemble that remark. But only in my own house, when I'm trying to convince the television what a bad team the other team is and why it's the most horrible injustice when the Red Sox give up a run. When I go to the ballpark, Red Sox fans and the fans of the other team (doesn't matter who) embarrass me by their vulgarity. I save my vitriol for the boob tube.
Ah shucks Luke, we don't wish nobody no bad whatsoevah....
Of course most annoying of all is that incredibly vocal Australian Red Sox contingent, screaming and whinging from thousands of miles away wishing all the bad possible on Luke himself.
Maybe Scott needs to smoke the objective pipe when it comes to Red Sox Nation.
No violence, just verbal jousting. My money's on Schilling, but Scott can probably take a verbal riposte and shrug it off like he doesn't even know he's been hit.
The next night D Backs fans got into it, and started hollering back.
We even got a chant going "Ste-vens Bet-ter" . (Than JD). Mr. and Mrs Drew were in attendance. They laughed.
D Backs lost that game too, but it was close and the atmosphere was like a playoff game.
Last Game RJ outpitched Dice K. Sunday crowd......finally more D Backs fans than Red Sox fans.....who had to go home for work on Monday.
But still fun.
If you can't fill your own house, then it's still better to have a full house, even if it's due to an "enemy invasion".
Why does anyone think this is true? Sure, there might be a handful of people who flew out from Boston for games, but the vast majority of Sox fans (and Yankee fans, for that matter) who show up for away games are transplants who live and work in the area the team is visiting.
Preferable.
I'm not sure this is true.
I mean Luke Scott is also embarrassing, but in a different way.
I doubt that. There are a lot of fans, like me, who grew up Red Sox (or Yankee, or Cubs, etc.) fans because their dad or grandfather was born in New England and relocated but maintained and passed down the family allegiance. I think we make up more of the visiting crowds than folks flying in for a weekend series.
Well I suspect it would be vast. We really are all over, and if you're a Red Sox fan in the Chicagoland area, then you're basically waiting for that one or two series a year that the Sox come to you.
I have too but I think the further away from Boston you get the more likely it is that the crowd is populated by locals who just root for a non-local team (e.g. SoSH). When the Sox go to Baltimore, New York, Philly it's probably more likely to be Boston-based fans who just made the short flight/drive.
In my experience this is true of any out of town fans. I've seen it on both sides of Red Sox games and at games I was a neutral observer at. I think visiting team fans combine the worst of "finally get to see our team in person", "I'm on vacation so I can get liquored up" and "I feel compelled to make up for the fact that I'm outnumbered here" into a delightful package of obnoxiousness, immaturity and general #############.
For example, for all the Yankee/Red Sox games I've been to at Fenway I have never seen a group of fans as vulgar and obnoxious as the Giant fans in 2007. Not sure why but they were a rowdy bunch. By the same token when I saw the Sox in Tampa in 2005 it was the same thing in reverse with idiot Red Sox fans acting every bit as asinine.
Agree, for the most part. The thing in Baltimore specifically is that Boston fans are typically in the MAJORITY. That makes it a little more distasteful, in my mind.
In my experience this is true of most fans.
For example, for all the Yankee/Red Sox games I've been to at Fenway I have never seen a group of fans as vulgar and obnoxious as the Giant fans in 2007. Not sure why but they were a rowdy bunch. By the same token when I saw the Sox in Tampa in 2005 it was the same thing in reverse with idiot Red Sox fans acting every bit as asinine.
I've never travelled to see the Yankees (I did attend a bunch of games in Fenway when I lived in Boston, and Wrigley/Comiskey in Chicago, but could never score Yankee tix) but I think this behavior is disgraceful.
It's like you're visiting someone else's house. You can cheer for you team, but besides that, STFU.
If you show up in another stadium acting the ass, chanting, making obnoxious comments, you deserve all the abuse you get (obviously not including violence). I feel no sympathy for obnoxious out of town fans who get a beer dumped on them.
I don't disagree generally. In the specific case being discussed (Sox fans in Baltimore), I'm just turned off by acting that way when you're the dominant team outnumbering their own fans in their own stadium. It's one thing to be the fan on the road playfully taking the abuse from the majority of the home fans- I've done that myself. But when it's essentially Fenway South, it's just a little less tasteful, I think.
I don't like loud mouths and obnoxious people at the ballpark, even when they're rooting for my side.
In my experience the fans I have the biggest problems with, and the ones who seem to get themselves into trouble, are the visiting fans who go from cheering "for" their team to cheering "against" the opponent. I think the former creates a fun bit of tension and antagonism, the latter is more along the lines of snapper's hypothetical rude house guest.
hmmm, I kind of disagree. I think if you do "take over" a visiting stadium you should get to celebrate it a little. If the Sox fans become the majority at Camden, I think they can act like the majority.
Just because they can does not mean they should. Unless you get off on being hated.
And, I find the angst of the crowd a little too testosterone-filled for my taste at NHL games.
The last "reasonably behaved" fan-base, MLB is also loosing its civility.
America has demonstrably changed, and not for the better, in the behavior of its citizens when in public.
Now, I'm an old coot, I'll admit that.
But I cringe at some of the things emanating from the mouths of fans at games, especially when women and young children are within easy earshot.
That said, good old-fashioned ribbing from one teams fans to the others is part and parcel of the true game experience.
How boring if the stands are filled 100% with home team "homers".
I've never seen anything like that from other teams' visiting fans. Cub fans can get loud & boozy, but they generally are good natured. Sawx fans, in my experience, are not only loud & boozy, but combative, thin-skinned, ill-tempered and extremely obnoxious as well.
I realize I'll get flamed for this post, but that's been my experience
I can only speak to Fenway, but civility has increased in the past 15 years. Now you can get bounced for swearing.
I'm reading Jim Brosnan's Pennant Race for the first time, and it's amusing how often he mentions Reds fans riding Reds players.
So of course it's disproportionately fans of the visiting team who end up buying those tickets. And the Rockies front office does everything it can to make that happen.
I would be fine with witty swearing at the ballpark (within reason). My objection is that the loudest guys usually have some version of "Hey (insert player name), you suck!" as their go-to exclamation.
They get many many more out of town fans than the Sox-not even close. Now we'll see a bigger crowd than normal for the beantown bys, no doubt, but that's mostly local Sox fans coming out of the woodwork, but nothing like the droves that you see for the MFY.
Some of those MFY games, hotel rooms are tough to get and that never happens with the Sox. Not even the final series last year.
I'll gladly put up with a bunch of obnoxious fans if they'd just turn down the volume on the ####### loudspeakers. At least those obnoxious fans have to supply their own loudness, and unlike the loudspeakers, you can yell right back at them if you like.
I work with a guy who said it was a shock and outrage the number of Bruins fans in the arena two weeks ago when the B's played in town.
I was at that game, as a Sox fan who flew down to Baltimore for the game. I'd say the crowd was 75% Sox fans that night. So Manny had a point.
I happened to be in the stands for Manny's #500. It was a Saturday night on Memorial Day weekend. If it wasn't a sellout it was damn close and if you weren't decked out in red, you were outnumbered. Only the lack of a Green Monster and the fact that the Orioles batted last would clue you in that you weren't in Boston that night.
Fill 'em up or suck it up.
In both 2009 and 2010 the Red Sox played 6 of their 9 games in Baltimore over the weekend. Last year was probably just a random scheduling fluke.
Philadelphia, like Boston and NY home games are continuously sold out so Philly fans flocked to DC.....to such a degree it was 75-25 Philly to Natinals fans for many games these past several years.
I believe that is about to change as the Nationals are going to field a very respectable team this year.
We may even contend.
Hopefully the team quality will draw fans to such a degree that the Nat's don't feel compelled to put Philly's fans fannies in the seats.
But if the Nationals fans dont come, shame on DC and "welcome Philadelphia fans!"
This year only one of the series is on a weekend. Since almost half of all series are on a weekend, the only real fluke would be if all or none of them were on a weekend versus a division rival.
There's one three-game set on a weekend at the close of the season in B'more this year. Who goes will depend a lot on how the Sox do this season, since we can probably assume Baltimore will be awful again, especially with that projected rotation.
Taunting and all that ######## turns me off. I'd rather sit next to a polite, knowledgeable fan of the "wrong" team than an overloud or aggressive fan of my team any day. (And actually, the knowledgeable isn't necessarily a required part of that calculus.)
Did Jose Canseco step down? Term limits?
True story: I was visiting Boston 2 years ago with girlfriend and twice in one night I was called a #@*$ (rhymes with runt) by women.
I've been to several Sox/O's games at OPACY and I don't notice any difference in the behavior of either fan base, aside from the color of the jerseys the more demonstrative fans wear. I think Scott's problem is that he says a lot of really stupid things, and so is targeted for abuse by the hecklers, who are a part of every park.
A couple of years ago, there was a rain delay at one of them and just for the heck of it, while we were wqaiting under the grandstands for the rain to subside, I decided to count the relative number of fans wearing clothing that betrayed their loyalties. Red Sox fans outnumbered Orioles fans by about a 2:1 margin.
In KC in 2010, I was sitting by myself like I usually do, watching the Sox play. There was a family seated right next to me, and this was while the Sox were still in it, but the injury bug had bitten hard by this point. First inning, and Kevin Youkilis gets beaned around the head and goes down hard. Before I could stop myself, I stand straight up and yell "MOTHERF***ER!"
Unsurprisingly, the family soon moved away from the crazy, scraggly Red Sox fan sitting by himself. I did feel bad.
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