Though 2nd place Atlanta kept pace with the Mets last night while throttling Curt Schilling in the process, Turner Field’s overrun with visiting support, a situation alarming to the Atlanta-Journal Constitution’s Mark Bradley.
Monday night was another installment in a weird and distressing series, a night when the titular host was made to feel like a tourist. To report that there were more Red Sox fans than Braves backers at Turner Field would be a slight exaggeration. To report that the 20,000 Boston zealots shouted down the home folks ” at least until the old nemesis Curt Schilling got shelled ” would fall under the heading of distressing old news.
œSounded like more Red Sox fans, said Jeff Francoeur, who was asked if such a thing bothered him. œIt doesn™t when you™re winning.
Such a thing, as we know, has happened here often. It happened in 2003, when legions of Cubs fans celebrated a Division Series clinching. It happened in 1994, when Pacers people flew in by the planeload knowing there™d be playoff tickets available at the old Omni. It happens whenever the Cowboys or Steelers play at the Dome. Question is, will it ever stop happening?
This has been a big-league city for more than 40 years. That™s time enough for the local franchises to have imprinted themselves on the marketplace, except that ours remains the trendiest of towns. Our imprints are issued in washable crayon.
œIt™s kind of a bummer, said Mike Mills, the bassist/keyboardist/singer for R.E.M., speaking of the proliferation of Sox fans around him. (Mills has standing in the matter, being a longtime supporter of Atlanta teams and a Braves season-ticket holder.)
This baseball team has been really good for a really long time. Just because this ballpark doesn™t have a Green Monster doesn™t mean it shouldn™t brim with the same hometown fervor as the famous Fenway. But it rarely does, and whose fault is that?
Though I’m tempted to turn this discussion over to the REM-hating Charley Steiner, it should be stressed that Bradley is hardly the first observer to bitch about ATL’s casual support for their professional franchises. Though perhaps, just as a point of comparison, the next time an AJC writer chooses to castigate the populace for exercising their right to spend discretionary income on whatever they desire, said scribe can provide a list of exactly how many ballgames he or she attended on their own dime over the past year.
Making this observation on the week the Sox come to town isn’t well-timed, because Sully, O’Flannery, and the rest of “The Nation”(tm) do this everywhere. I mean, has this guy ever watched a recent Sox-Yanks game held in the Bronx? Even from just making a casual visual survey of the crowd, and listening to the ambient noise, you can tell half the place is Sox fans. And that’s a team that averages 50K per home game.
agreed, and the T. Moore (less than ecstatic) piece on the same topic a year ago also coincided with Boston’s annual visit.
I should mention that it’s almost patently ridiculous to compare the hometown attitude of a Northeast city with that of a Southern one. The entire structure of the south is one of farms and plantations so that one’s region may be important, but the central city is not exactly regarded fondly. Racism may always apply, but don’t forget that central ATL was almost completely destroyed in the civil war, unlike historic Boston. It can be said that perhaps the south needs to “get over” 150 year old events but come on, they won’t, it’s ingrained. I say this living on the border where a trip to Richmond is as much of a wake-up call as one to Baltimore- the south is not “tight-knit.”