“I don’t think he needed to go that far with the comments,” Mark DeRosa said of Marty Brenneman, “Obviously, he has some deep-seated hatred for Chicago.” Hmm, possibly Tribco booting his son Thom from the ‘GN booth has something to do with it?
(talk shit, get hit — Marty Brenneman)
During the last of the Cubs-Reds series Wednesday, Cincinnatti’s Adam Dunn clocked one into the Wrigley bleachers. As is tradition, Cub fans tossed it back, but then added 14 more balls as well. Rather than blow it off as a more entertaining crowd maneuver than, say, a wave, from the bleacher bums, Brenneman cited Cub fans as the most “obnoxious” in baseball and said the 15-ball toss “makes you want to see this Chicago Cubs team lose.”
Us? The lovable losers? We’re the worst? Imo, the team that gave us Marge Schott, Pete Rose (and Pete Rose Way, and by extension Tom Sizemore’s ESPN depiction thereof), and the Nasty Boys of Rob Dibble’s tenure that gave Dibble his current public career “ aren’t exactly in a position to lecture anyone on classy behavior. The 15-balls incident appears to be some sort of Wrigley cultural turning point. As in, “huh, Cub fans pissed to see their team giving away a game?”
The sight of Cub fans demanding a winner in Wrigley appears to have stunned sporting experts, like the Tribune’s Rick Morrissey, who writes of the incident: “Cubs fans are not the most obnoxious in baseball… But they have become meaner. And maybe all the losing has taken away some brain cells.”
A loss of brain cells? Only at Wrigley could fans pissed off that their team is losing be seen as obnoxious and mean.
Do you really believe that they throw balls back because they are pissed off they are losing? They throw them back because 1) tradition tells them to and 2) they are drunken fucking idiots. I’m not sure how you can so easily write this behavior off as an “entertaining crowd maneuver.” Are the “Horry Kow” t-shirts that are flying off the shelves just more entertainment for those flawless Cubs fans?
“Imo, the team that gave us Marge Schott, Pete Rose (and Pete Rose Way, and by extension Tom Sizemore’s ESPN depiction thereof), and the Nasty Boys of Rob Dibble’s tenure that gave him Dibble his current public career – aren’t exactly in a position to lecture anyone on classy behavior. ”
Don’t forget Death Wish’s cover of “Wonderwall”.
I’ve said similar here before, but leave those Cubs fans alone. The market’s in the toilet, it’s a long drive in from Kenilworth and the repeated sight of Mexicans without vacuum cleaners in their hands has them all on edge.
First — that looks like a draft I posted, so my apologies to all for the glitches and devaluing the CSTB brand. Hope Ace Hardware wasn’t reading!
Andrew — drunken idiots, yeah, such is life in the bleachers. Flawless? Did I say that? I don’t think “Horry Kow” tops “Jeter Sucks A-Rod,” but I don’t know how to connect that shirt (see link below) with throwing back 15 balls as a joke, the way you do, and that somehow Cub fans are mean and the most obnoxious in baseball. Considering how popular Fukudome is right now, it’s easy to see the shirt as dumb and insensitive, but mean? Obnoxious? They’re not hating him yet.
http://www.yardbarker.com/media/media/13849
Throwing back balls itself is about being ironically defiant losers, but Cub fans are definitely angry re Jacque Jones, La Troy Hawkins, and our pitching that particular day. If players and managers blow plays and games, Cub fans are out of line for booing? Did Zell sell Wrigley to the Masters Tournament?
The last time I saw anything like that at Wrigley was Andre Dawson getting tossed out and the outfield littered with hundreds of plastic beer cups — the only symbol of protest available in the bleachers. And people were truly pissed off about Dawson getting ejected.
“Considering how popular Fukudome is right now, it’s easy to see the shirt as dumb and insensitive, but mean? Obnoxious? They’re not hating him yet.”
Are you fucking kidding me? Seriously? It plays into a racial stereotype and it is completely fucking obnoxious and stupid. So if I put an image of Baron Davis with a big smile on his face and huge lips, while eating a piece of fried chicken saying “oh lawdee I loves me some basketball and chicken!!” it wouldn’t be seen as mean or obnoxious? If you really think there is nothing wrong with it, go fuck yourself. Fukudome himself has basically said he doesn’t like it.
Where did I say Cubs fans are out of line for booing? It’s the entire atmosphere promoted at games I have a problem with (besides the shitheel fans Wrigley draws). I could name many bad experiences I’ve had at Wrigley, but here are just a few:
1) The first Cubs game I went to in 1988. I was and am a Mets fan, which wasn’t the most popular thing to be in the Midwest at that time. I was 12 years old and a grown adult said “fuck you” to me because I had a Mets shirt on. I didn’t say a word, I was just walking into the stadium, a 12 year old kid, the first baseball game I ever went to- and got a fuck you for wearing a t-shirt.
2) The same game, a genius in the bleachers poured two full cups of beer on Lenny Dykstra while a ball was in play. How did the crowd react- they gave the guy a standing ovation. He bowed and waved. Classy!
3) Fast forward twenty years- I used to live near Broadway and Belmont. Walking home down Clark in the afternoon, after the Cubs had apparently won a game, someone motioned for me to give them a high five since “the cubbies won dude!!!” I kept walking and the guy yelled “Fucking faggot!” as his friends cheered him on and laughed.
So you haven’t seen any bad behavior since the Andre Dawson days? Have you been to a game since then? Did you miss these stories?
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/mlb/news/2000/05/16/cubs_dodgers_ap/
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/sports&id=5423337
Maybe you just have a selective memory, but you sure are being naive about this. This idea of Cubs fans being idiots didn’t just come out of nowhere.
Why didn’t Brenneman just indict the 15 fans who threw balls onto the field instead of indicting, ripping apart millions of Cub fans around the world?
Marty Brenneman is still POed that the Tribune co. gave his son his walking papers a long time ago.
Hey Marty, without baseball fans your nothing more than a dishwasher at a Applebees someplace.
Andrew — I called the “Horry Kow” shirt “dumb” and “insensitive,” words not generally considered complimentary, but whatever. Your what-if example, and the actual A-Rod homophobic shirt I mentioned, are both pretty hateful. I’m not excusing the Fukudome t-shirt, I think it’s lame. But as misguided as it is, it’s also one that — again — in a dumb and insensitive way, is a pro-Fukudome shirt. It’s point isn’t being anti-Asian, or using his race to attack him, it’s just retarded fannishness. Sorry, I don’t see it as the cross burning you do. I’ll concede “obnoxious.”
There’s a big difference in that and what Brenneman and Morrisey are saying, that somehow Cub fans are “mean” for “booing” their own lousy teams and “obnoxious” for giving other teams shit, especially in ways like throwing home run balls back on the field and stealing a Dodgers cap from a guy in the bullpen (remember, the Dodgers charged the fans and made it violent — they could have called security). So far, your two posts conflate the 15 Balls incident into racism, violence, and your own childhood trauma.
As for the examples you cite of Cub fans run amuck, every ballpark draws its share of drunken louts. Fans outside Dodger Stadium, SBC in SF, and Cellular Field have been shot. I used to see fist fights regularly at Oakland’s Colliseum. I don’t get out to that many Wrigley games, but are Cub fans worse? Dykstra having the beer thrown on him is absolutely out of line, but how does the 15 Balls incident have anything to do with the kind of hateful stuff you, Brenneman, and Morrisey all want to read into it?
Ben
P.S. Andrew — this week at Dodger Stadium, on Jackie Robinson night no less, the Latino dude behind me referred to Robinson as “that little negro” and called one of the Dodger middle relievers a “homosexual” for throwing balls. So, yeah, I think there’s a big difference between truly mean bigots and that dumbass Fukudome shirt.
Ben
I remember once in the 90’s they gave out Mike Piazza Photo Baseballs and late in the game there was a controversial call, Tom Lasorda came out to argue and the fans got really pissed and started throwing the balls onto the field. It was hilarious. It was also way more than 15 baseballs (probably hundreds). The umpire ended the game.
There are only two types of baseball fans: the thoughtful, almost nerdy, passionate and completely reasonable ones and the redneck, fratboy, drunken wastes of dna that usually get loads of press when shit like this happens. That’s it…nothing in between. I don’t think there’s one team that doesn’t have both (Karim Garcia and Jeff Nelson fighting fans in the bullpen, anyone?) When Pedro pitched at Fenway back in the day, Dominicans (a very small population of Boston) used to come out and cheer for their countryman and wave Dominican flags. Positivity all around, right? Yeah, until white folks started bringing even bigger American flags every time he pitched and started singing God Bless America to drown out the cheering Dominicans. I hate people. All of them.
Ben,
You seem to have an excuse for everything. First it was “Cubs fans are frustrated and sick of losing” so they do stuff like this, to “…well, this type of behavior goes on everywhere.” This is exactly the whole problem- no sense of responsibility or wrongdoing but plenty of whining and excuses. Just like you make excuses like “remember, the Dodgers charged the fans and made it violent — they could have called security” (thus letting the fans who started the whole thing off the hook), others will make excuses like Bartman or the Billy Goat curse instead of blaming it on Prior or Gonzalez. There’s no admittance of guilt or fault, only more and more excuses, and it’s really lame and one of the things that makes Cubs fans so easy to hate.
Andrew — If you’ve read my posts on CSTB re Cub fans, you’d know I’m with you on all that. I think the statue of Harry Caray out front of the park is a monument to dumbass drunks everywhere. That it took this long to get a statue of Banks up is an example of what’s wrong with the fans and ownership of the Cubs. I wish Sam Zell all the luck in the world in getting Phillip K. Wrigley’s name off that place – PKW was the worst owner of any sports team in Chicago history. I welcome anything from Office Depot Park to Oprah Field. The fact that Cub fans are finally angry about their team is an improvement, imo.
My original point re Brenneman is that Cub fans are no worse than anywhere else re obnoxiousness, and no, I didn’t shift the argument to “it goes on everywhere†in response to you. I pointed that out about the Reds and their fan base in the original post. Throwing the balls on the field, as Mark DeRosa said, is funny, but also a pain in the ass time waster. That Brenneman and Morrissey managed to manufacture some outrage over a dumb stunt like that is what prompted my post. I wish they would have gone off the same way when concrete fell from the upper decks onto fans or when Dusty Baker received death threats from psychotics.
Ben
Wrigley Field was named after my dad, not me FYI. Anyone who knows Cub history knows it was a pretty competitive franchise until I took over and ran it into the ground.
Oh and who pissed in Andrew’s Corn Flakes?
I believe it was Ben that pissed in my Corn Flakes, Phillip, as it tasted suspiciously similar to Hot Doug’s and PBR.
Not me – it woulda been Red Hook or Sam Adams. Sounds like you been spending time at Commis — excuse me, Cellular Field, too.
Ben
Cincinnati gave you Marge, but Chicago claims that bat-corking steroid-abusing home run hitter who somehow forgot how to speak English when appearing before Congress.
I recall watching a Cubs-Reds game from Cincinnati on the Cincinnati telecast when Tom Brenneman was complaining about there being too many Cubs fans. I thought at the time he should have been upset that the home team fans were not sitting in the ball park. The past two years now it is the Cardinals. Marty is in the Hall of Fame but seems be be a very angry man.