Typical Scumbag Mets Fans

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJOl_Nt6JLM&feature=player_embedded

I have no idea how to embed videos like Joe does so I'll just link to it.

Now, a Simmons-esque breakdown of the video:

0:01: General chaos. From this Zapruder angle it's hard to tell exactly who's fighting whom, but it looks like there are two distinct cells to the fight--"fat, sweaty, wife-beating Mets fan in the grey shirt" taking on all comers in the 10th row, and "sweaty, boozed-up, possibly-female Mets fan in the dark blue/purple outfit with the ponytail" making a hard charge up from the 9th row. They have a good mix of about 50% active fighters and 50% "hold me back"/"break-it-up" guys until...

0:08: "Woman in the grey top" battles her way up from the 8th row and makes a late charge into the thick of the fight, much like the great Zenyatta, another feisty filly known for breaking late. She asserts herself immediately by going after King Hippo in the grey shirt (which now appears to have shit all over the back of it?) and trying to push him down despite giving up about 150 lbs to this monster. This is what you like to see from a rookie--never backing down or being intimidated by the veterans, and giving the manager no choice but to keep you in the lineup. Reminds me of Josh Reddick playing his way past J.D. Drew and hitting like .650 in July or Jed Lowrie playing past Marco Scutaro at short in May by hitting roughly .900. Guys like that make TV commentators say things like "You just can't take him out right now" and "You just can't keep a guy like that on the bench forever." If I learned anything from watching Hard Knocks, it's this: don't count your reps, make your reps count. Here's looking at you, grey top.

0:09: "Blue button-down over white tee with cargo shorts guy" (who is also stealing my look from 5th grade) pulls a classic Ray Lewis here. Complete dirtbag move. First, once the fight is already a full-blown melee, and there are already about six "hold me back"/"break-it-up" guys on the scene, he decides he's going to be a "break-it-up" guy too. He actually steps over his buddy in the 15th row because he's apparently in such a hurry that he can't wait for the guy to stand up, but then lolligags it down to the fight. Then he picks the safest point of entry (behind four other "break-it-up" guys) and reaches one arm in like they're a basketball team about to tip off ("da dadada da dadada da! 1, 2, 3, HEAT!") rather than bunch of scumbag Mets fans cranked up on $8 Twisted Teas punching each other's lights out. He maintains contact with somebody's shoulder for literally three seconds, then retreats immediately once King Hippo starts really wailing on people. Sorry, Ray, but diving on the pile will not get you a 0.5 tackle on the score sheet when I'm keeping the book.

0:14: It's the money shot, the video's one true laugh-out-loud moment. Grey top woman, who just seconds ago appeared poised for a breakout year, gets her clock cleaned by an improbable 1-2 punch sequence: a right hook to the temple from "checkered shirt guy" followed immediately by a devastating back elbow from King Hippo. The harder they come, the harder they fall. Ironically, after teaming up on one of the all-time great ballpark knockouts, Checkers and King Hippo immediately start wailing on each other with some seriously painful-looking head shots. Do they not see what they could accomplish as a team, if they could only put aside their petty differences? These two could have been hell on wheels--one of the all-time great ballpark hooligan teams. The style and bravado of Checkers mixed with the creativity and reckless, unchecked drunken aggression of King Hippo would have made for a historically great tandem--the sequence on Grey Top with the assist from Checkers and the finish from Hippo was on par with Stockton-to-Malone or McNamara-to-Warrick. Instead, these guys are Israel and Palestine. Sad.

And don't feel bad, Grey Top. Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the greats, like John Kruk diving out of the way of Randy Johnson's fastball. It's sad that her fight got cut short, but her exit opened the door for Checkers v. King Hippo, which turned out to be a hell of a slugfest itself. It's never fun to be collateral damage, but sometimes you have to trade away the fan favorite in that deadline deal to get the superstar for the playoff push.

0:22: Grey Top, reeling from the knockout, is helped off the field of battle by an older woman in a suit jacket, whom we'll call Clara Barton. (Side note: who wears a suit jacket to a baseball game? Is this woman a Senator?) Clara was cowering several rows back until she saw Grey Top get KO'd, at which point she threw caution to the wind, dove in and pulled Grey Top out. They say that mothers are capable of incredible feats of strength when their young are threatened, like lifting cars to save trapped babies, and I have no doubt that those powerful motherly hormones and the sisterly bond between all women, regardless of age, race, gender, or their baseball loyalties, be they with the proud and noble Nats or the classless, overpaid, Ponzi-scheming Mets, drove Clara into the fray to rescue Grey Top from Ground Zero (and the very high likelihood that if someone actually managed to KO King Hippo, he would have fallen backward right on top of her). If there's a lesson in this for Grey Top, it's that angels are all around us. Sometimes you just have to look.

0:35: Stadium perp walk. "Dead man walkin'! Dead man walkin'!" Two questions: (1) once you clear the initial fray, is there any conversation between the cops and the guy they're dragging out? I can't decide if silence or an attempt at conversation would be more awkward there. (2) Do they take this guy to real jail or just baseball stadium jail? Is there a designated room in the stadium where they toss drunks like this loser to let them sober up? Is it more interrogation-style, like a casino back room? Mets fans, this is why we can't have nice things.

0:55: Kudos to the guys filming for keeping quiet for the first full minute of this video. Videos like this always get ruined by some clown who thinks he's Gus Johnson yelling out his stupid take on the whole fight. Veterans like Vin Scully, Al Michaels, and these two guys know when to let the action on the field do the talking. It's like a fine wine--you have to let it breathe.

1:18: You see this view from the outfield seats? This is why I always sit on the first base side. The tickets cost the same, but you can actually see home plate. I literally have this exact same view from my apartment rooftop ten blocks away, only that's free. If I got some binoculars, Angels in the Outfield-style, I probably wouldn't have to buy tickets ever again.

"Coach! Coach! Jonny Gomes has an angel!" "Kid, he's hitting .207." "I know, but he's got an angel!"

Also, please note the crowd. Attendance has decreased each of the last three years across MLB, with the usual suspects (Boston, Philly, New York) as the obvious exceptions. The Nats have averaged 22,800 and change per night, good for second-to-last in the NL, ahead of, you guessed it, the Florida "We Actually Threw in the Towel This Year and Covered the Upper Deck Seats" Marlins. (The good news is that attendance has increased each of the last two seasons as the team's record has improved.)

As far as I can tell, the Nats rely on a few key factors to draw fans:

(1) Your ideal baseball fan is a working professional (aka has some disposable income) with a family. Most DC/Maryland/Northern Va. professionals (myself included) are imports from somewhere else, so they'll turn out when their hometown team comes to DC, but otherwise don't care all that much about the Nats themselves--for example, I went to Nats-Brewers earlier this year, and was amazed by the number of Milwaukee transplants in the crowd.

How did I know they moved here from Milwaukee? Because rather than a Prince Fielder or Ryan Braun jersey, they were all wearing Craig Counsell swag--swear to God, there were hundreds. Counsell played one season in Milwaukee (2004), played for Arizona for the next two years, and then came back to the Brewers in '07. If you're a Milwaukee fan looking to buy a team jersey or T-shirt from 2007 onward, you're buying Fielder, Braun, or Weeks, or, if you're a sucker who's never heard the term "rental" before, Sabathia. The only explanation for wearing a Craig Counsell jersey to a Nats game in DC in 2011 is that you moved here from Milwaukee for work in 2004, when Counsell was one of the few decent players on the team, and decided when you were packing that the Counsell jersey was indispensable for some reason.

This concludes my exhaustive analysis of why there were so many Craig Counsell jerseys at the ballpark earlier this year. Moving on.

(2) The highly popular teams with national followings (Giants, Dodgers, Cubs, Braves) always bring a crowd--of the games I've been to this year, the Giants series was the hardest to get a ticket for. These teams have been around long enough and successful enough to have family histories attached, much like the Red Sox and Yankees in the AL--grandpa rooted for the Cubs, so Dad roots for the Cubs, so now you do too. This is where you get the six-year-old kid wearing a brand-new Zambrano shirt and his dad wearing a Sandberg jersey riding the Metro to the game together.

(3) The ethnic appeal. Ichiro's ability to bring Japanese fans to the park is well-documented, and I can tell you from going to Nats-Mariners earlier this year that even at 37, playing for a crap team, and on the opposite coast from his home city, he can still bring 'em out. NBA teams realized this as the game started to globalize, and they now hold ethnic theme nights built around their foreign players (Turkish night in Toronto when Hedo was there, Israeli night in Sacramento for Omri Casspi, etc.). Baseball hasn't had to be as obvious about it--it's just a given that if you have a foreign, non-Latino superstar playing, you'll have a crowd from his home country. The video at the beginning of this post (remember the video?) was taken 7/29, Chien-Ming Wang's first start for the Nats, and his first start period since 2009. There was a huge Taiwanese presence at the park that night, which probably explains most of why there was such a good crowd.

(Note: I wanted to call him "Chien-Ming Wang, Steve's 'favorite rice eater'", but couldn't decide if that was racist/offensive or not. Is "rice eater" racist? I mean, obviously it's an ethnic slur, but it's not really offensive, right? He's Taiwanese. The Taiwanese eat a lot of rice. You're not really insulting him, just describing what he probably likes to eat. Plus, it's not like what you're saying he likes to eat is bad--it's just rice, which is tasty. It's not like calling him a "shit eater" or something. That one is reserved for Bobby Jenks and David Wells, who I think actually took a hunk of shit out to the mound and took a big bite out of it when he was playing for the Padres.)

(4) The Phillies and Mets. They get their own category at the intersection of Nationally Popular Teams, Teams with Recent Success and Marketable Superstars, Nationals' Division Rivals, and Teams from Cities that are Close Enough to Commute for the Game if you're a Die-Hard. With these games, you get a good mix of Cubs-style family history fans, general baseball fans that want to see Cliff Lee/Jose Reyes/etc., and Philly or NYC locals who take the train in to see the game.

The video above gets you (1) through (4) in some order of importance, but we can pretend that the crowd shown isn't a perfect storm of attendance variables--it's just a typical night in baseball-craaaaaaazy DC!

1:20: Can anybody identify this guy's accent when he says "Ah yes, a baysboll game"? I've listened to that like ten times and I'm still no closer to an answer. Russian? British? "Some kind of Spanish"? No idea. I hope this guy was just visiting America when he filmed and will go back and tell everyone in his country that they were right--Americans are fat, drunk, stupid animals who like to fight in public.

Till next time,

The Commish