Reasons Not To Go

To the cacophony of concern over minuscule Jays crowds this week, let me add a personal experience.

For the 11-year-old boy's birthday, we and another dad and son took in the Yankees game eight days ago at the dome. Picked up the tickets, $50 per, which got us great seats eight rows up along the first base line.

Bought the obligatory overpriced food, and were in place for the first pitch. So far so good.

Joining us for the game in the seats directly in front of us were three young men and two girls, girlfriends to two of the guys. Right away, it was clear that the intent of the men was to quaff as many beers as possible over the course of the game, and of course it had to turn into a marathon.

Now, you can wonder about the financial I.Q. of people who imagine it makes sense to drink wildly overpriced beer to excess while paying no attention to the entertainment on the field, but whatever. As the game wore along, the swearing picked up, as did the volume and the general distraction as they clearly weren't all that interested in the game. They wanted to drink beer and find ways for someone, anyone, to pay attention to them. And, naturally, they always imagine themselves to be the funniest people in the building. By about the sixth inning, it was impossible to ignore them, and the fact there were two small children very close by didn't really impact on them and their behaviour.

Predictably, by the ninth inning, internal tensions had grown, and one stood up, drilled his buddy with a right hand and stalked off.

Now, I should tell you my son and his pal found all of this wildly entertaining. But to me, these were reasons not to go to another Blue Jays game. For roughly $200, you basically buy a lottery ticket and hope you don't get stuck with drunken idiots nearby. Meanwhile, the objective of the organization seems to be to encourage maximum beer consumption, and the results are predictable. It wasn't an awful experience, but it was unpleasant. Call me a prude, I guess.

All this would be fine, it seems to me, if the Jays were grappling with excess demand. But they're not, and crowds of 11,461 and 11,159 this week suggest big problems may lie ahead with the baseball team seemingly sentenced to endless mediocrity.

If you have an outstanding team people desperately want to see, maybe you don't have to worry about whether some people have to grin and bear it when seated near people whose objective is to drink and be loud in general, not loud as baseball fans.

But if you have these Jays, you better make sure that's not happening, ever. If a family can't be guaranteed a family experience, why would a family ever return?.

Comments

[brian]

the jays are not just for families take away all the beer swilling fans and have just you and your families there and its bye bye bj's

[mike]

It's not just the drunkards. I complained to an usher during a game once about the group in front of us that kept getting up for, and returning from, food / drinks / washroom breaks in the middle of at-bats - clearly obstructing everyone's view (and happening just about every other half-inning). The usher gave me a look of "what do you want me to do about it?" How about controlling the time people return to their seats - as per the usher job description at just about every major sports stadium?

I then wrote to the customer service department and never heard a response. Haven't been back since.

[Nick Martin]

I came in from Winnipeg last week to get our kids settled at an Ontario university. We sat in the 500 section, surprisingly good seats......but......First off, a nine-inning game shouldn't take almost four hours to play. The time between pitches seemed interminable.
This wasn't my first Yankees game, I knew a lot of Americans would come, and the vast majority were just fine. But each time the Yankees come, there are a few obnoxious loudmouths, screaming, swearing, baiting Canadians, sometimes verging on racism, certainly profane and at times homophobic, accompanied by frequently standing and blocking the view of dozens of people. Where were the ushers?
We knew the prices inside, we ate outside the park.

[chris]

Damien, you can take that experience and apply it to just about any sporting event out there. Perhaps its best if you don't take your family to these sporting events. Or, just buy tickets in a family zone. Just sayin'.

[DamienCox]

Damien here. . .responding to Chris Madlam. . .I fear you may be right. Certainly, when I've tried in the past to take the kids to events, often we've had that kind of experience. It just kinda stinks, is all. Why do the louts get more rights than the rest of us?

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=515706721]

Are we complaining about people that are "Actually" coming to these games? Can you blame Toronto Sports fans? If you had to watch guys like League, Overbay, Wells, Barajas, Encarcion, Inglett etc etc etc you'd be an alcoholic too. The Drunks at Jays games are no worse then at Wrigley Field, Fenway, Yankee Stadium etc.

[Darren]

The other side of this problem is I have seen the Rogers centre staff quiet genuine fans who were cheering or heckling the other team in a loud manner. I'm not talking about profanity, just loud cheers, standing to applaud or shout (sometimes clever) insults at the opposing teams. The ushers always seem to be around to "shush" these fans, or respond to complaints in these cases.

I'm with you Damien, get the louts out, but let the fan cheer his guys, even if it means they are louder than the average Toronto fan.

[Darren]

Just a second thought...we don't need a family zone, we need a drunken idiot zone. Discounted beer if you are seated in section 521 (I know the LLBO doesn't allow this..too bad) that way we semi-sober fans know where they are and can take our families and our single $9 draft to our section and enjoy the game without the sideshow

[Baher saka]

I've been to 18 games this year because I'm a huge Blue jay fan and I might of been one of those drunk idiots at a couple of those games. Now it's obvious the problem with attendance is that the Blue Jays are 15 games under 500 and that the team has not made the playoffs in 16 years. So if you take away the drunk idiots like myself and take the rest of the beer out of the stadium and try to cope with a under achieving team sober then what can you possibly enjoy, I might as well be a Toronto Maple Leafs fan. I will agree with you on the swearing part, I think it's totally disrespectful to swear in presence of anyone let alone to have children around, but you can not classify everyone that drinks in the same category as that group of people. Maybe now that attendance is low we can actually realize that this team is not good at all, by the way, $50 for baseball tickets in an old stadium watching a non playoff team is way too much. This is why I won't watch the Toronto Maple Leafs

[PlatinumCard]

So is the point that people should behave themselves in public? Or that the Jays should make sure people behave themselves at games?

I'm not sure whether you've thought this through before posting because, Cox, the events you've described could have happened anywhere. It isn't a problem with the Jays; society has produced individuals who have different values than you do.

If people want to pay a lot for drinks, drink them and then act out they should be remonstrated for their actions - what have the Blue Jays done wrong in the situation?

[Geoff Read]

I took in a White Sox/Yankees game a while back, and the ushers there immediately threw out drunken louts. Several people were ejected during the course of the game.

BTW - and feel free to delete this part of the comment, but the professor in me wants to mention that there is no verb "to impact". You can't impact something. You can have an impact on something. Impact is a noun. It gets misused constantly in the media and it drives me nuts.

[Dan Daoust]

Chris, what you're saying is of course true, but I think Damien's point is that's fine when the house is full, but when the team is dealing with record low attendance, you'd expect them to make any effort to make the game experience as pleasant as possible for as many fans as possible. The usual just doesn't cut it anymore, or shouldn't.

[Ryan]

I'm no genius or anything butconsidering there was just over 11,000 people in a staduim that can house over 50,000 makes me think there may have been an empty seat or two. If this group was annoying me to the extent that you write, I think I would just stand up, look around, find some open seats and move there. It's not like those are the only seats that are open in that general vacinity. Also, I'm not sure if the Jays have this but some teams/arenas/stadiums have special family sections where drinking is prohibited. I found this out the hard way when attending a Hamilton Bulldog's game a few years back and was sold a ticket to a family section without my knowing. We went to get a beer, took it to our seats, and as we were getting comfortable an usher came by and told us of the no drinking policy of the section. We said thanks and got up and moved to another section. No problems for anyone.

[Oliver]

I guess your not with civilians at sporting events very often.

[DamienCox]

Damien here. . .re Ryan Johnston's comments. . .just to clarify, there were about 22,000 fans at the game I was at. . .I find it fascinating that you believe that a person who pays for certain tickets to a sporting event should move to another, possibly cheaper, location because somebody else is misbehaving. . .Also, wondering whether it wouldn't be simpler to have drinking sections rather than non-drinking sections?

[James]

I don't think that's the problem with low attendance. I think baseball has been displaced in our entertainmente budget. Before all we had in winter was hockey and in summer baseball and a bit of CFL football. Now we have basketball, soccer to add to the mix and I think baseball has been hurt the most. Can you really blame people, the most overplayed athletes are in baseball, mark mcgwire, sammy sosa, roger clemens et al steroid use, and on the jays side of the story the have an ownership group that doesn't really look like they care. And there's really not a lot of action in a game. I had a 16 year hiatus being away from north america, came back two years ago, and nobody I knew cared about baseball or the bluejays anymore. Know some guys that play in beer leagues and stuff, but they don't care about the jays either. It may be too late!

[RHEAL COUSINEAU]

HI, I FIND IT VERY HARD TO BELEIVE THAT TORONTO CANNOT SUPPORT A GOOD TEAM ,THEY NEVER DO. FANS SHOULD BE PROUD OF THEM ATHEY ARE COMPETITIVE MOST NIGHT HAVE EXCELLENT PLAYERS BUT SURELY YOU FOLKS CANNOT EXPECT TO MATCH TEAMS WHO HAVE UNLIMITED PAYROLLS THAT BY THE WAY ARE KILLING BASEBALL.LET US NOT TREAT THIS TEAM AS MONTREAL HAS TREATED THE EXPOS. SHOW SOME SUPPORT AND HOPEFULLY MANAGEMENT CAN GET RID OF SOME TEAM BUILDERS THAT RUN THE TEAM NOW IN A BAD WAY.RAY

[www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=515706721]

I know people that are loud and obnoxious and they don't even drink at games. You can't control people.

[Bryan]

Your comparison of buying a Jays ticket to a lottery ticket is exactly right. You never know what you'll be surrounded by at the RC. When I was a kid, I remember there being lots of other kids and families in the stands and it was a great experience. Sure, there were still drunks then, but they had a much shorter leash and the onus for the stadium staff seemed to be making sure 'the rest of us' had a good time and not the obnoxious few.

[Ryan]

Hey Damien,

I'm not saying move to the 500 level lol, but how about next section over or two? There were still 28,000 empty seats in the skydome (I refuse to call it the rogers center). I agree with you that you shouldn't have to deal with obnoxious drunks but probably the easiest way to deal with them is to move and not aknowledge them or talk to an usher or even their manager.

I think the problem with all drinking sections is that the problems they have now would only get worse with all drunks together. It would be a ticking time bomb of drunken mahem. If you disperse them throughout the stadium I think there is less of a chance of a HUGE incident from happening. Can you imagine how many drunken bru-ha-has there would be in that section?

[Chris]

Years ago I had 500 level seats in left field and there was someone standing behind the last row yelling the entire game. I can't say whether alcohol was involved but it probably put off everyone in the section from attending future games. I doubt the target of the guys hate ever heard a word. Except for booting everyone out what else can be done. Besides what's on the field they have done lots of things over the year to disinterest all the fans and have done little to try and bring the people back. Winning will help, but it's not the solution. many that loved the BLUE jays no longer love the team and it will take a lot to get them back.

[tred]

Damien, while I can sympathize with you (idiots drinking and swearing in front of your kids, etc) I also find it amusing. You and your colleagues in the Toronto sports media constantly bemoan the quiet, reserved behaviour of fans at Toronto sporting events. Don't you realize that those notoriously noisy venues in other cities like NY, Chicago, Philadelphia, etc are that way because of the amount of drinking there?

I've been to several games this year. Here's my personal experience from one of them:
I went to a Jays v BoSox game earlier this year (when the Jays were still in it) with my family. We were not drinking or swearing but we were making a lot of noise (cheering, jeering, etc) along with a few others in our row. A guy in front of us actually complained. He told one enthusiastic young fan to sit down and be quiet. Eventually he got up and left with his whole family because WE WERE CHEERING TOO MUCH!

Go figure.

[Don Zettler]

I agree with all you say. Why spend 5-6 hours travelling to and from a Blue Jay game when these over priced "athletes" could care less whether they win or lose. It's much easier to watch a game on TV and if the game stinks from the start then the remote control can take care of the bums. Minesota has the right idea. If the player is not producing he sits on the bench until another oportunity for him to play arises. This should be the case whether it's Mr. Overpaid Wells or Mr. Underpaid MacDonald. How hard can it be for a pitcher to hit the catcher's glove? Or for a guy who has prepared all his life for the chance to earn big money to hit a ball 10 times the size of a golf ball?

[jimmy]

Hey i love to drink at games. I once taunted a guy in a Ripken jersey saying "cal ripkin is a fag" then when i realized what i said, i stood on my chair and apologized to my entire section, saying that i was sorry and was usually a G rated cheerer. At the same game i spent 9 nine innings trying to get alex rios to acknowledge me but he wouldt, but nick markakis did, even though i was heckling him and cheer rios. The point is, i am great fan, and usually do not swear, but alex rios is a jerk.

[Conn Smythe]

I would have justed moved, but I agree with with Damien.

Yes, drinking and obnoxious fans exist at every sporting event, but it seems like the drunk and obnoxious fans at the Jays do so without any threat of punishment or ejection.