Baseball Fan Behavior: Two Examples

Recently the Florida Marlins, one of the teams that I’m following, were playing a road series at San Diego. The Padres are having a very disappointing season after initial high hopes (well, everybody has high hopes at the beginning). They are dead last in their division, and the large number of empty seats at their ball park is an obvious reflection of this. It may be argued that those fans who do choose to pay today’s currently high ticket prices must literally be “fanatics” of the San Diego Padres. But fanaticism cuts in both a positive and negative sense.

When a batter hits a ball into the spectators’ section of the park, be it from a foul ball or a home run, it is always understood, at least in Major League Baseball, that whoever gets their hands on the ball owns it. So it was that once, when a Marlin batter hit a foul ball, it landed in a large section of empty seats. A somewhat heavyset, middle-age man and a little boy raced toward the ball from opposite ends. They arrived at where the ball was at the same time. The man then physically backed into the boy, pushing the kid back so that he could pick up the ball unchallenged. The little boy went back to his seat, and the jerk who took the ball in this manner went back to sit with his laughing party of adults (who all seemed to think that the whole incident was a big hoot). I don’t think that they realized, though, that they were on the ball park’s video screen the entire time. The park erupted in boos, and the TV announcers had some choice words to say about the ball-napper. Then the Marlins bullpen pitchers called the boy over and gave him a ball that they were throwing, eliciting cheers from the crowd.

The very next day, in the very same park, a Marlins batter swung at a pitch and his bat slipped from his hands, flying into the fans section. Again (fortunately), the seats were mostly empty and the bat hit no one. But some dude (I won’t quite call him a jerk) then picked up the very expensive, personal bat of this player and sat back down with it, grinning and holding on to it as if it were now his own personal property. One of the Marlins coaches coaxed him to come over and talk with him, but those responsible for televising this game then panned away from that conversation and the matter was dropped from discussion. Regardless of what eventually happened, I thought it was pretty brazen of that fan to presume ownership of that bat.

Does this sort of rude fan behavior always happen at games, or does having a nearly empty ball park tend to bring out the worst in spectators? Or is there a disproportionate number of jerks among the diehards following lousy teams? Maybe the mindset is like this: this team sucks and here I am, a big victim paying this high admission and watching my home team lose. I’m entitled to anything that comes in my general direction and no one’s stopping me!

Oh, by the way, the Marlins won both games (and the following game as well). I will say this about Florida Marlins fans: they’re not as fickle as others. Even when their team is winning, their home ball games are poorly attended!