$800,000 to get a few newspaper headlines and some pre-Opening Day publicity for her fledgling radio career, I have skin like an armadillo because I have to so I can do what I do for a living.
The incident was fleeting and perhaps because I’m numb to this kind of stuff after 20 years on the radio, I simply smiled at the shaking, angry young man, asked him how his Sunday was going and asked if he cared to meet my family, who actually think I’m a pretty nice guy and that the real “jerk” would be the one who would publicly perform such an act.
But at some point, I feel compelled to opine publicly about this stuff when I see another 42-year old man who was simply a regular, Joe Sports Fan supporting his home team lying in a coma because of the sheer violence, lack of human dignity and pent-up anger of a few crazy sports fans in our country.
And the starting centerfielder of the Orioles is dumb enough to encourage this kind of behavior and no one calls him out on it?
It makes me not want to be a sports fan anymore, really, if this is the message sports is giving its fanbase and the community.
As much as we make fun of the British and the hooliganism of soccer, we really aren’t too far behind if you’ve ever spent any time in the upper deck of some ballpark or arena with an opposing jersey on.
This story out of Los Angeles has been heartbreaking to many but to anyone who has ever been to a sporting event in America in this century we’ve all seen escalated tensions at some point in the stands. As much as the commissioners of the leagues and the owners of the teams call it “family entertainment,” I think we’re all at the point where we know that’s just a marketing ploy.
8
Pre-game tailgating in sports leads to idiotic public behavior in the fourth quarter throughout the NFL. I see it every week.
The Preakness has now morphed from a civic treasure into a sad event where the mascot is an ogre on the head of a horse encouraging the youth of the Mid-Atlantic to come to the infield and be a “legendary” drunken idiot.
Players on Twitter drop N-bombs and F-bombs with amazing regularity. Female “journalists” spend their days on Twitter calling the hometown fans “jerks” and “Baltimorons” for supporting the home team. And of course, at any sporting event involving rival teams after dark, the local police suffer their worst evenings of the year with arrests, mostly stemming from alcohol abuse, which has led to verbal abuse, which winds up leading to physical violence.
And then to top it all off, some idiot sportswriter in Western Pennsylvania writes the most irresponsible and dumbest column
