This has been on my mind for a while, but events this year have really brought it forward that I want to see what other people think on it. The only way to describe it is "Hooligans".
You know the type of people I am talking about. The crowds at European soccer events that riot because their team lost, the idiots at baseball games that run onto the field because their friends dared them to. The type of people that disrupt an event because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
My first real experience with hooliganism took place in early April when I went to see the
Toronto Blue Jays play the Boston Red Sox within the first week of the season opening. Toronto lost that game... badly. 13-0, not a pretty game to watch. I can stomach watching my favourite team getting stomped into the turf, but what left a bad taste in my mouth was the so called "fans" at the game who were letting their boredom and drinking get to them.
Throughout the game, as Boston kept tacking on runs, people from the upper levels were throwing paper airplanes out onto the playing surface. It is kind of bad when the players have to pick stuff up and cram it into their pockets so they don't risk injuring themselves during a play. But I would say half way through the game, some guy ran out onto the field between pitches (so all of the players are still out on the field), ran and slid into second base, then high tailed it out to centre field to try and make it over the wall before he got tackled off of it by 3 security guards.
A little while later, a guy who was clearly drunk, ran out on to the field to try and shake hands with Boston's third baseman. He was tackled even harder. What bugged me about this wasn't the fact that the guy was disrupting the game, but that as he was taken off the field in hand cuffs (and resisting the police officer to the point where they picked him off his feet), the crowd was chanting "Let him go!"
Add in a few dozen more paper airplanes, and someone throwing a full plastic cup of beer onto the field (which could have injured a player), and the crowd chanting "Go Leafs Go," a completely disgraceful spectacle in Toronto that evening.
Fast forward to the half way point in the season at the All-Star game, and you get an 18 year old kid who posted on twitter saying that he will run onto the field if he got 1,000 retweets. Guess what happened? Yeah... he got leveled and is facing a year in jail (story can be found
here).
I just don't understand what it is about acting like a complete ass at a professional sporting event that draws so many people. I mean, it isn't like you will get your 15 seconds of fame on TV or anything. Most sports now have rules in place to not show these idiots on TV. Ok, yeah they might wind up on YouTube, but is the 20 second blurry video of your ass getting tackled by big, beefy security guards really worth the criminal charges, the fines, and having the fact that you were an idiot on your permanent record?