“Orioles Fans Have a Reputation for Being the Best behaved Fans in Baseball. We Trust you will uphold that reputation.” or…Giuliani Time Part 3

I am a Baltimore Orioles fan. Every game I attend at Camden Yards, this message is shown on the JumboTron: “Orioles Fans Have a Reputation for Being the Best behaved Fans in Baseball. We Trust you will uphold that reputation.”

And it has never really set well with me to be considered “well behaved.”

Football fans are not well-behaved. They are drunk, loud, obnoxious, most definitely not well-behaved. They never, ever, flash a message like this over at M&T Bank Stadium (btw, for all future writings I will call it Raven’s Stadium, as I hate hate hate corporations that name stadiums) during Raven’s games.

But this post is not meant to criticize the fans. This is a post about the management.

Just this message, shown during every game, like Communist propaganda, is an insult to me as an American. (I know, hyperbole, but bear with me.) Management, like the old Soviet state, has a great interest in keeping the fans docile, and passive and apathetic. It helps to distract us from the fact that the team has not put together a winner in 10 years. It helps to avoid nasty little incidents like the big walkout of last year, during which a thousand fans dressed in black walked out of the stadium at 5:08--“5” for Brooks Robinson and “8” for Cal Ripken.
I witnessed a refreshing sign of fan anger when I saw the O’s play a few weeks ago, right before Sam Perlozzo was fired, when upset fans stood up and booed, MERCILESSLY. They booed bad fielding. They booed poor hitting. They booed Sam Perlozzo coming out of the dugout to yank the starter. They booed, swore, and got mad. They were not acting like “the best behaved fans in baseball.” They were acting like human beings, pushed too far, made to suffer too long, like the little kid who is sick of the bully beating him up and taking his lunch money--they fought back.

Oppressive Governments, and Oriole Management, like it when people do not question their actions. They like it when people trust their leaders. They like when people sit at home and watch TV and just accept their lot in life. At the Yard, they like it when you sit, cheer when they tell you, and otherwise keep your mouth shut: Behave.
For a game that drapes itself in the flag and patriotism and the National Anthem and God Bless America, it really doesn’t seem very American to me.

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