Opening Day

[bruce]

Frankly, I couldn't give less of a shit.

That's kind of sad, isn't it?

Bruce

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Some shitwit involved with the Blue Jays thought it would be kew1 to call for the mass booing of Hideki Matsui, new right fielder for the New York Yankees. Matsui was just killing people in Japan, and signed with New York in the off-season.

Between that and Halladay inexplicably hitting Jim Thome in the pre-season, the Jays are quickly turning into the kind of team that I don't want to associate with. What the fuck, calling for a guy to get treated like trash in his first MLB game? That's fucking bush. If they want to get some organized booing going they could go for that fat tub of vagina Wells for cracking on Toronto fans like a pussy and then later for backing down from every oh-so-controversial statement he made in his laughable "book" recently.

I can't get too excited either. There are teams spending four times what teams in their own division have to work with, and there are team owners pocketing their revenue sharing money. Everybody's reprehensible. I'll get excited again when there is an NFL style cap and probably not before.

[Pseudointellectual GenXer]

Opening day of what?

[Pyschotic Hillbilly]

Opening day of what?

<b>YOUR MOTHER</b>

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Look, I don't want to see anybody get hurt, but Jeter's mug howling in pain on the front of ESPN.com is pretty goddamn funny.

Jeter was hurt when he tried to go from first to third on Jason Giambi's comebacker with Toronto's defense shifted to the right side of the infield.

Huckaby ran up the line to field first baseman Carlos Delgado's throw. Jeter dived headfirst into the bag, and Huckaby fell, his shin guard driving into Jeter's shoulder.

Good hustle by Huckaby. If you're going to get pasted by a team putting up $164 million in salary (and they were -- they lost 8-4) you might as well play them as tough as possible.

Also, Ken Huckaby has one of those great "Harry Carey" names. It would be worth researching necromancy and the zombie plague that would result just to have Harry call that play.

[Bugs]

I was at that-there game up in Toronto, and sawr Dirk Jeter get smashed like a bug under Huckaby's shinguards. Not a malicious play at all. There was nobody covering third (the Giambi Shift was on), so Huckaby and Mr. Mariah Carey had a good old fashioned foot race. Jeter won, but rolled off the base in pain and got tagged out. Huckaby was simply hustling, and well, hustle + shinguard-to-the-shoulder = pain.

Not that I would wish harm on anyone, but as Jeter was getting wheeled off the field, a Jays fan yelled: "Great season, Jeter!"

High comedy. Especially when all the fat asshole Yanqui fans stuffed like sausages into Paul O'Neil jerseys started talking smack. NY fans may be drunken, obnoxious, band-wagon hopping window-lickers, but they do provide for some entertainment.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Not that I would wish harm on anyone, but as Jeter was getting wheeled off the field, a Jays fan yelled: "Great season, Jeter!"

Ah-hahahahahahahahah

Y'know, a part of me doesn't want all the baseball discussion on Jolt County to become some sort of Yankee-bashing hate-in. I mean, I try to present a very neutral and unbiased BBS for everyone. On the other hand, there's really no goddamn place to go if you're a Blue Jay fan that wants to talk about the Blue Jays, and there are a ton of Blue Jay fans here. That, coupled with the fact that Da King doesn't show up any longer (he pulls for the Yanks), well, I see no reason not to be as biased and irritating as all hell.

High comedy. Especially when all the fat asshole Yanqui fans stuffed like sausages into Paul O'Neil jerseys started talking smack. NY fans may be drunken, obnoxious, band-wagon hopping window-lickers, but they do provide for some entertainment.

That is the thing -- they get scoreboard whether or not they are terrible fans. (This has to do with a long-standing opinion of mine, which is the better your team plays the less knowledgeable the fanbase that supports it. But that's a topic for another thread.)

I am really stoked by the "Great season" comment. I used to go see Jays-Orioles games with my friend Brian all the time, and in the interest of taunting me, he'd constantly state how quiet and polite Toronto fans were. It's the Skydome, not the city library. LET IT RING.

Annnnnnnnd lastly, if I ever make it back to the east coast for a week, I will attempt to set up some sort of JC - Blue Jay excursion. No idea when, as I'm not sure when I can make it back, but this SO needs to happen.

[Ben]

New York is, along with Boston, one of the top two sports cities in the country.

People live and die by the Yankees and Mets.

Nobody lives and dies by the Devil Rays.

Nobody lives and dies by the Rockies.

Nobody lives and dies by the Dodgers (anymore).

And nobody SURE AS SHIT lives and dies by the goddamn BLUE JAYS.

You call a bad fan one that gets obnoxious and rowdy at a game?

I call a bad fan one who got free tickets and spends most of the game on the cellphone. I call a bad fan one who hadn't even heard of the team before people starting waving flags from their cars. Who skips out early to beat the lines at the cappucino/latte stand. Who lives anywhere in California or Florida.

So all you NY-hataz best step off, 'fore they show you how far a GOOD fan's boot can fit up yo ass.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

New York is, along with Boston, one of the top two sports cities in the country.

Give me a fucking break. I have no quarrel with Boston fans, but the majority of Yankee, Met, Ranger, Islander, Jet, Giant and Knick fans are FUCKING CRETINS.

People live and die by the Yankees and Mets.

Sure, sure, when the team is doing well. Of course, when there are 8 million people in a given city, a simple ballpark is going to sell out regardless of how the team is doing, but sure. Right on!!

Nobody lives and dies by the Devil Rays.

Well maybe people should. NO team in the last 25 years of professional sports has had as much shit flung at it as the Devil Rays, and no fan (I agree there aren't many) has had less to get excited about than Devil Ray fan.

Let's say the Devil Rays get a little better. Let's say that they keep ahold of Huff, Kennedy improves a bit -- whatever. Let's say that they do in fact go out and improve their team. Well, hahaha, the joke's on them! They get to play a weighted schedule against the Yankees and Red Sox! Hee hee hee! Two teams that the league whose year to year success the league would like to ensure. They are thrown into a division where two teams WILL win 90 games each year, and another (Toronto) that will win at least 80. Yet, do you hear Devil Ray fan whining? Do you hear him complaining? No! If you hear him at all, you're listening to him suck it up and fucking deal with it.

I have no respect for somebody who can follow a team that makes the goddamn playoffs every fucking year. Not simply because of their following of a good team. You point out an organization like the Devil Rays (or, yes, the Saints, he said without irony) that blows fucking chunks year in and year out and I will be able to present you with a fan, Mister Parrish.

Nobody lives and dies by the Rockies.

The fans out here really are lousy.

Nobody lives and dies by the Dodgers (anymore).

True.

And nobody SURE AS SHIT lives and dies by the goddamn BLUE JAYS.

Ha-ha. You know, I only engage in this tete-a-tete because I care. I see where you are going with this. Had you been a different man, a lesser man, you would have brought up the "tradition" argument. I've seen it many times. And it curdles my blood each and every time I see it.

"The Blue Jays? Fuck the Blue Jays. They have no tradition." -- Every fucking Chowd on the Face of the Planet

But what the hell is tradition worth? Tradition? We live in a world where Carlton's Fisk UTTERLY MEANINGLESS game six home run -- a home run that extended a series that the Red Sox fucking LOST -- is shown more times than the single most dramatic at-bat in baseball history (Joe Carter v Mitch Williams, the first time a guy ended a World Series with a single swing when his team was losing). That's what tradition is, motherfucker. Tradition is there being more people in Boston than in Toronto, so some group of wire-rimmed maggots on Madison Ave desperately panders for their dollar and tells you that, seriously, Fisk's moment was "priceless." Priceless. FUCK YOU. Rose, Bench, Morgan and all those other crazy fuckers beating every team in the A.L. that came up to face them was fucking priceless. Oh, but there's just not quite as many people living in Cincy, is there?

I'll tell you this much. When the Blue Jays won their championships, there wasn't a single despicable human being that played a significant role. (I state it like that because Chunks Wells was on the roster, unfortunately.) Sports are oftentimes a meaningless distraction, but if there were one group of guys in all of sports that I could point out to my future brood and say, "Be Like Them" it would be the 1992 and 1993 Toronto Blue Jays. No cocaine-snorting 20 year olds like your precious 86 New York Mets. No whore-throttling, syphilis-riddled pieces of crap like your precious 27 Yankees. And no Drunken Micks either, if you're digging my ditch here.

I call a bad fan one who got free tickets and spends most of the game on the cellphone. I call a bad fan one who hadn't even heard of the team before people starting waving flags from their cars. Who skips out early to beat the lines at the cappucino/latte stand. Who lives anywhere in California or Florida.

I call a bad fan one that is completely ignorant to the laughable economic disparity which provides the only real advantage that their team is able to rely on. I call a bad fan one that doesn't read the box scores when their team is out of the playoff race. I call a bad fan one which has never had to go through a period of time -- a stretch of motherfucking years -- where their team had NO FUCKING SHOT of even making the first round of the playoffs due to the miserable incompetence of their owner, staff, and coaches.

And a good fan? A good fan, you ask? It's not being two hundred pounds over weight and throwing beer at somebody wearing an Orioles cap in your downtown "Escape From New York" style park. A good fan can name the starting lineup of their team that year when they lost 13 games in football or over 100 in baseball. A good fan hops onto an NFL Blitz 99 machine and plays against his friends as his own, horrible team even though he's got Heath "Fucking" Shuler handing off to Mario "Fucking" Bates. A good fan is one that has gone through more sports-related hardship than any sane person would, and still refuses to do dick-all but watch with interest and intensity when their team is playing. NONE of you understand. I'm not locked up in here with you. You're locked up in here with m -- wait, shit, I am losing focus and channeling Rorschach all of a sudden.

But I will tell you this, mon ami: being a fan comprises more than just, say, identifying by far the best team or person in a given sport and then only following THEM... or in your case, I guess, "him." You MISERABLE, FRONT-RUNNING BASTARD.

[bruce]

They say St. Louis is a sports town.

Number of Cardinals games I've been to in the 2-1/2 years I've lived here: 0

Number of Rams games: 0

Number of Blues games: 0

St. Louis Swarm: 0

River Otters: 0

Wow. I totally suck.

Bruce

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

YES AND YOU WILL BURN IN HELL FOR THIS BRUE

No, that's the thing with sports. I understand how someone can not like them. Well, for some reasons. Bruce Willis's wife in Unbreakable made an argument against sports which was whiny, bitchy and without foundation (Christ, I would ENJOY living in a world where the only violence that there is takes place on a football field, at least one where the only violence is that and me putting my fists through her holier-than-thou cunt harpy attitude), but I can fully understand how someone would not wish to pay $120 for a ticket to see a bunch of millionaires half-ass it against another bunch of millionaires all while a bunch of billionaires profit and, oh right, do it in a stadium that was paid for with taxpayer money and yet somehow doesn't allow for games played within said taxpayer-funded stadium to be broadcast anywhere within 120 fucking miles on cable or even a dish.

Plus, the Rams are a bunch of babies and cowards who roll over like the last axle in an erector set and who don't get nearly enough shit for losing a Super Bowl where they had the greatest Vegas spread in their favor since Namath v Colts, 30 some-odd years ago.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

Captain's Log, Supplemental:

What the fuck is a "St. Louis Swarm"? When are people going to learn that singular nick names just don't work?

[bruce]

Captain's Log, Supplemental:
What the fuck is a "St. Louis Swarm"? When are people going to learn that singular nick names just don't work?

It is/was an IBL basketball team.

I think I got spoiled for sports by, of all things, graduate school in the Ivy League.

See, I played in the band (yes, with the plaid jackets) in a futile attempt to preserve my sanity and a not-so-futile attempt to meet nubile nerdy women. And so I was there for Pete Carrill's last season of coaching basketball, and I was sitting in the stands when a bunch of short skinny white guys beat the defending national champions in the NCAA playoff first round.

It's been hard to find a sport that can live up to that kind of spectator fun.

Bruce

[AArdvark]

A good fan is one that almost got his wedding cancelled because his beloved Angels were going to the playoffs and he's got season tickets. Not the World series but two opponents before them. Dude was gonna throw his bride to be in the waiting room while he and his buddy went to the game.

See, I played in the band (yes, with the plaid jackets) in a futile attempt to preserve my sanity and a not-so-futile attempt to meet nubile nerdy women.

Shoulda went to band camp. I heard stories.....!

River Otters

Water polo team?


THE
SPORTS!
AARDVARK

[bruce]

River Otters

Water polo team?

United Hockey League.

All the band camp stories are true. Although the fun thing about college marching bands (well, really I only have experience with college scatter bands) is that, unlike in high school where you had to save up all your debauchery for band camp and be sort of circumspect about it, in college bands you can be totally up-front and don't have to sneak around.

I mean, just from personal experience, I can talk about, let's see: both sex and Schedule I controlled substances in the bathroom of the band bus, fitting six naked people into a standard-sized bathtub, nearly getting kicked out of games/parades/various events because of too little circumspection with the flask, a drink called "sock water" whose primary ingredient was, well, sock water, and a song entitled "Tertiarysyphiliticcuntuponmypeter." I can't count the number of tollbooth attendents I've drunkenly mooned from the band bus window. And shit, that's just the <i>Princeton</i> band, not the RIce band (although it was a lot tamer and mostly restricted itself to spiked watermelons and beer on the road trips...although it may just have been that I didn't know the right people).

Bruce

[Guest]

Nobody lives and dies by the Rockies.

The fans out here really are lousy.

True, and there's two reasons for that... 1) the utter mismanagement of the Rockies over the years, and 2) the sheer perfection of going to a Rockies game.

I don't love baseball any more, but I still strongly like it, and when I go to a game in other cities (Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, other areas I frequently find myself in) -- I mostly concentrate on the game.

But in Colorado, the weather's always a perfect 75 degrees except in April (and October, but ha-ha, the Rockies won't be playing in October for some years!), they serve Fat Tire at the stadium, the seats are comfortable, there's a bevy of beautiful Colorado women around, and oh, about the sixth inning, an astonishing sunset over the stadium horizon.

I go to that, and midway through the game, I'm drunk, happy, leering, and completely unaware that there's baseball going on.

Whereas at Braves games, the seats are uncomfortable, the beer sucks, it's hot and sticky, and so I'm able to maintain yelling "Larry" and "how's your wife" at Chipper Jones in a derisive manner throughout.

Greg

[bruce]

I don't love baseball any more, but I still strongly like it, and when I go to a game in other cities (Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, other areas I frequently find myself in)

If you're frequently in St. Louis, how come you haven't called, beeeaytch?

Bruce

[Guest]

If you're frequently in St. Louis, how come you haven't called, beeeaytch?

Ok, it hasn't been that frequently lately, I guess. Sometime this year, though.

I'll call. We'll go to a sporting event!!!

Greg

[bruce]

I'll call. We'll go to a sporting event!!!

By "sporting event", do you mean "drinking Scotch in my basement and playing Atari/Intellivision/Colecovision/NES/SNES" ? Because if so that's cool, but if you mean, like, a real sporting event, then you should see my earlier post about how much I don't actually go to sporting events and realize that you're going to have to drive because I'm going to get shitfaced and then I'll keep bugging you with questions, like, at a Cards game, "did he just score a touchdown? Was that a three-pointer? Where's my silly mid off sticky wicket, huh?"

Bruce

[bruce]

By "sporting event", do you mean "drinking Scotch in my basement and playing Atari/Intellivision/Colecovision/NES/SNES"

And when I say "Atari" I mean that you can have your choice of Super Pong, 2600, or 7800.

Bruce