I was born and raised in the Philadelphia area, where my sports allegiances were forged. Now I live in Fort Collins, Colorado, where football fans root for the Broncos, and fans of baseball, hockey, and basketball also root for the Broncos.
I recently attended a game at Coors Field between the Rockies and the Mets. I decided, as an homage to my fellow bloggers, who argue (here and here) that it’s the height of douchery to wear logo gear for a team not involved in the game you’re attending, to wear my Rockies cap instead of the Phillies hat I normally would have worn. I rationalized this by saying to myself: As a Phillies fan, I root against the Mets, the Rockies are playing the Mets, so I can show support for the Rockies.
Rockies pitcher and active senior Jamie Moyer gave up three runs in the first inning and the Mets tacked on another one along the way. The Mets had a 4-0 lead when pinch hitter and longtime Rockies hero Todd Helton stepped to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the eighth inning. We were sitting in the right field nosebleeds, but a friend—a Met fan, no less—had texted that there were open seats nearby in the 100 level right behind third base and that my kids and I should come down.
I texted back: “We’ll come down right after this Todd Helton grand slam that’s coming.”
The good news: I get to do more racist profiling, and this time it seems the Tweeters aren’t Bruins fans or Bostonians.
More bad news: it appears many of the racist Tweeters in this case are actually Caps fans.
Yikes.
To recap, Ward committed a bad penalty – his first penalty, reportedly, since February – at the end of regulation during Game 5 against the Rangers Tuesday night. The ensuing Rangers power play produced the winning goal and a 3-2 loss for the Capitals.
To be sure, it was a BAD penalty; Ward basically wacked a Rangers player in the face while jockeying for position after a faceoff, and he cut the guy’s mouth open. So I can understand people getting upset, and he certainly deserves some criticism for a boneheaded play.
On one hand, it’s good to see that racist hockey fans aren’t concentrated in the Boston or New England area. On the other hand, I feel compelled to point out the volume of racist Tweets following Game 5 is significantly smaller than what occurred after Game 7 against the Bruins (see Meet The Racist Bruins Fans Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 for more). So there you have it.
I’m not going to take this opportunity to gloat and turn this against all the Capitals’ fans who bashed Boston and Bruins Nation for those awful Game 7 Tweets. Because quite frankly, we deserved it, and the true Caps fans out there don’t need me to give them grief.
No, I’m taking this opportunity to gear up for another Vendetta Ride.
Because i can’t stand fucking racists. And because Joel Ward deserves my support.
The BTBNL Blogging Team have dealt with all the big issues this week -New England Hockey Racists, NFL Football suicides and Bullying a Cubs Fan for catching a foul ball. I thought I would lighten the mood.
One of the most popular traditions in AFL Football is the singing of the club song This can only be sung by the winning team (100 burly blokes) on the match day with the Players, Coaches and various other hangers on grunting out a ‘song’ with lots of whoops and yeehahs and gallons of sports drinks being tossed around the change rooms like a rainbow shower
This tradition has carried on from the early days of Australian Rules Football- and many are adapted from classic tunes from folk songs, anthems and even vaudeville. I can remember some of my own club songs playing footy with the Calista Bombers, See The Bombers fly up up…. and also the Now long gone SouthPerth Tigers in the Sunday league -a blatant rip off of the Richmond Tigers tune “We are from Tigerland” and my favourite the Black and white striped jerseys of the Kalamunda Cougars which used the tune from an old Aussie Folk song the Road to Gundagai :
Any plum, any pud, is Kalamunda any good is Kalamunda a-n-y good
For our system is devine from backs to Forward Line For footy we’re reknown We are wearing the colors of white and black
to the finals we’ll take them and the flag will be back
Any plum, any pud, is Kalamunda any good is Kalamunda a-n-y good
Who are we ?-”Kalamunda” How do we eat em!! RAW!!
Much like National or other Anthems there are the Blind faithful and there are the haters and I take it into my own hands to ‘Dis’ some of the AFL clubs songs There are certain club songs that can create pain -from when they took the Title from your team but I will try be as objective as possible
the links to the club songs are on the team names
I’ll Start with my Best and finish with the really shit ones
ST KILDA We are still waiting for the Saints to win another Premiership but any win is like a New Orleans Jazz party Until the 1960′s used to run with “I do like to be beside the seaside ” Glad they changed that!!
RICHMOND We are From Tigerland -this one is for you Tom Lappas-
The best song to sing as a Bunch of Burly blokes!
ADELAIDE CROWS Using the old US Marines marching song this one is the best
of the newer teams of the League
BRISBANE LIONS Adapted from the French Anthem La Marsellaise It was the old Fitzroy Lions Club song Funniest thing is watching Aussies singing the Brisbane club song instead of French NTL Anthem
SYDNEY SWANS another American Civil War marching song adapted to Originally the South Melbourne FC theme but now relocated to Sydney since 1982
CARLTON BLUES A bit Barbershop Quartet -but they have sung this song since the1920′s
GEELONG CATS A musical ode totally ripped off from the Musical CARMEN The Lyrics were penned in the 1960′s
-I have my own lyrics that are far less complimentary
COLLINGWOOD from the Early 20th century song Dolly Brown
Its like Ragtime Hour for the Magpies and their Evil Empire
WESTERN BULLDOGS Starting To get cheesy though FootscrayFC have used this song since the 1930′s
MELBOURNE Its a version of the Melbourne club song Red & the Blue by Australian singer songwriter David Bridie on the Indigenous Marngrook Footy show -defintely not a worst version
HAWTHORN HAWKS -recognise this tune anyone -Yankee Doodle Dandy
Yellow and Brown need I say more !
Now we get into the Bloody awful section
GOLD COAST SUNS From their First ever win last year- Notice the Fella to the right holding up the lyric sheet Song actually sounds worse with the band !!
FREMANTLE DOCKERS As If Having purple Jumpers wasnt bad enough -they had a competition over the Summer to change the song here is an alternative by Perth band Eskimo Joe
GWS GIANTS -This makes me want to drink vodka with Vladimir Putin ! Remember Moscow anyone?
PORT ADELAIDE POWER Seems like everyone is giving Port a kick lately This one takes the title as the worst song by 3 lengths It sounds like it was written but then rejected by the WIGGLES!!
Hope you had a look and laugh for your Friday ! Give me your thoughts
Let me start by saying that Steve Bartman is a better person than I am. He’s a better person than Moises Alou, Mike Wilbon, and all the Cubs fans who still revile him and hold him responsible for the Cubs’ loss in the 2003 National League Championship Series. (And he had a similar fielding percentage to Cubs shortstop Alex Gonzales in the fateful inning that doomed him to a life of hiding.)
Steve Bartman, of course, is the fan (one of the fans, actually) who tried to catch a foul ball that left fielder Moises Alou may have been able to catch in the eighth inning of Game 6 of that NLCS. The Cubs had a 3-0 lead in the game and a 3-2 lead in the series. They needed five outs to advance to the World Series for the first time since 1945, and if Bartman had not made contact with that ball, Cubs left fielder Moises Alou likely would have caught it and they would have only needed four outs. Instead, Alou did not make the catch and slammed his glove in anger at the fans—one in particular—who got in his way.
Long story short (in case you don’t know how this ends), the Cubs threw up on their shoes and lost that game 8-3, then were eliminated by the Marlins the next night in Game 7. Cubs fans, needing a scape (billy) goat for their frustrations, pinned the loss on Bartman. He was subjected to threats of varying severity, including a thinly veiled one from the charming young governor of Illinois at the time, Rod Blagojevich, who suggested that Bartman should enter the witness protection program. Pardon the Interruption host Mike Wilbon confessed later to hating Steve Bartman.
More than eight years later, just this past March, ESPN Chicago did one of those fan-voter March Madness brackets of Chicago’s Public Enemy #1. Steve Bartman was among the 16 people most hated by Chicagoans. You know who was not on the list? Shortstop Alex Gonzales, who booted a surefire double-play ball that would have gotten the Cubs out of that eighth inning with the lead intact. Or any of the actual players in the game who allowed the Marlins to score eight runs that inning after the Bartman incident.
Even notoriously tough Philly fans eventually forgave Mitch Williams for his role in losing the 1993 World Series. And he was an actual player in an actual game who gave up the actual Series-clinching home run. He wasn’t just some guy in the wrong place at the wrong time whose life changed forever with an impulse move that 99 percent of baseball fans would have made in the same situation.
Here’s the part where Steve Bartman is a better person than the rest of us: He has completely disappeared, and he has refused opportunities to cash in on this moment. He forwarded tongue-in-cheek gifts from Marlins fans after the game to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. In the years since, he has turned down a ton of money—including a $25,000 offer to autograph a photo of himself and a reported six figures to appear in a Super Bowl commercial eight years after the fact.
Cubs fans have ruined the life of one of their own because they’re desperate to blame someone for generations of their team’s futility. But any Cubs fan who blames Bartman instead of Alex Gonzales or Mark Prior or Kyle Farnsworth or any of the other players who were actually in the game is misguided. If you pin the entirety of losing a series that your team led three games to one on that fluke of a moment, you are a hateful, spiteful loser—and you’re part of an irrational mob.
I know many Cubs fans rationally, as individuals, do not profess hate for Steve Bartman. But there’s a reason he went into hiding, and that a guy who clearly loved his team has not been back to Wrigley Field since. The mob mentality that forced Bartman to leave the city in a disguise, and that had six police cars guarding his house, and that forced his family to change phone numbers still exists—it may have diminished, but ESPN Chicago’s bracket proves that it’s still there.
I’ll be honest, I love this commercial for MLB: The Show 2012, which went viral because it tugs at the heart strings of all baseball fans. I think most sports fans can relate to the release Chicago will experience when the Cubs do eventually win it all after 100 years without a title. Chicago is a great city, and the Cubs are a historic franchise, so I think on some level, most baseball fans root for them at least a little.
But so long as Steve Bartman keeps showing up on lists of people Chicagoans hate the most, along with the likes of Bill Laimbeer, Brett Favre, and Albert Belle, I will root against them. Because they don’t deserve a title.
One of the questions I’ve attempted to answer here is whether or not the people who Tweeted racist statements regarding the Capitals’ Joel Ward were in fact true Bruins fans and proper Bostonians. So far, after looking at 10 of the authors of those racist Tweets, it appears that most of them are what a sane and rational person would consider a Bruins fan (Editor’s Note: Part 2 of this series has been updated with new information).
The second question – where are these people from? — has produced more distressing but not entirely unexpected results. The collection so far includes Massachusetts towns like Plymouth, Attleboro, Danvers, Bolton and other regions well outside of Boston. In fact, we have Tweeters from New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut. So it seems that this is not just a Boston or even a Massachusetts problem but one that spans New England.
To be sure, not all of these Tweeters are from the area. As you’ll see below with Ryan Clifford, some folks had no affiliation whatsoever with the Bruins and just happened to be watching the game and suddenly felt compelled to blurt out racist comments regarding the outcome of a hockey game that really had no bearing on their lives. Which is just sad.
In any event, before we get to the next couple racist Tweets (due to time constraints, I was only able to get two for this installment), let’s turn our attention to one of the few Tweeters who issued an apology on their own.
Junior Seau’s suicide is a tragedy for his family, friends, and community. His mother’s emotional comments to the media and fans⎯ending with an anguished ”take me, take me, leave my son”⎯moved me to tears. All of us at BTBNL send our thoughts and prayers to the Seau family. Having battled depression for years, I am always affected by heartbreaking stories of those who have taken their own lives. My demons scream in empathy.
