Well, that sure was a rough week for the Cheer Club. Not in terms of the losses, but in terms of the physical and mental strain of dealing with Yankees fans, Red Sox fans and a guy from SkyDome security who didn't read his morning memo.
The Red Sox fans, for the most part, were the nicest of the three. Even the guy who spotted Alex's Expos jersey and told him to "Go back to Portugal!" wasn't that bad, because when we didn't stop laughing at him he went away. And we met some pretty great Red Sox fans who came up to see the O-Drum from section 120, and instead of trash-talking the Jays they commiserated with us. That was fun.
The Yankees fans were a whole different ballgame. Last time we met some good ones, but this time we just saw the idiots, I guess. I imagine the elderly "gentleman" who came up to heckle us is pretty good in the stands at Yankee stadium, though he seemed a little too-prepared. He took it well when I stole his Yankee flag that he tried to hang on the drum. But the guys who came up afterwards were just the dregs of Yankee fandom. They tried their best to get into a fist fight with us. They were pretty funny in their lack of baseball knowledge, even Yankee knowledge, and they had a coping plan for responses: they all shouted gibberish together to drown out comebacks. That worked for a few minutes until Mike began to simply drum at top volume over anything they said, which infuriated them. One threw his mostly empty beer at Mike. Mike stood up, the guy said, "So, are you gonna fight us?" Mike chuckled and said "No," and went to the concourse. The beer thrower and the guy next to him suddenly twigged to what was going on and got up and ran off. Mike returned -- he had actually just been standing in the tunnel to the concourse.
The remaining three kept up their doltish act, becoming more and more vulgar until an usher came to ask to see their tickets. Gee, how would they have tickets in an unsold section?
The start of Saturday's game has some real fireworks. After straightening out Thursday's mess, we figured all would be smooth sailing. Nope, a very aggressive security supervisor came out screaming in the first inning. At first he was incredibly rude to me, saying "Shut up, I'm talking to the guy with the drum!" Mike pointed out that I was the organizer, so the supervisor gestured for me to come with him. He reamed me out in the concourse about how he was already receiving "player complaints", pointing to his walkie-talkie. Whenever I tried to explain that I had been over all of this with the head of security, he'd shout down my explanation with "NO! You know you CANNOT play the drum after the pitcher is in the set position!" I said that he needed to talk to his boss, because I was told what he was saying about the pitchers on Thursday but then all of that was taken back on Friday by the head of security. He said, "Oh, you BET I'm going to talk to Mario, and you'll regret being such an idiot about this!"
So I went back to the drum. We kept playing, because by playing we would get to the bottom of all this -- if we were ejected for playing while a Yankee was pitching, it would be pretty conclusive proof that the Yankees had indeed complained about the drum.
Well, about five minutes later, the same security guy came back with a big grin on his face and called, "Hey, buddy!" to me. I went into the concourse to talk to him, and he said that he just had a strip taken off of him for not reading his morning memo, and that we could play the drum whenever we wanted as long as we were a section away from people in their assigned seats, and since we were in an unsold section, everything was fine. We shook hands, and that was that. And then we saw a game where Frank Menechino pitched. I guess you can't win every battle. We gave the ME-NE-CHI-NO chant a really good workout while he was up, though.
Well, with Mike now working near the Dome, we should be able to coax him and the drum out to even more games, right Mike? I'm making a MENECHINO FOR CLOSER sign for Tuesday. Who's coming?
Two game-thread comments that made my week:
NYJaysFan36: Aaron, it was cool to see the O-Drum. Your drummer was very good. We were in 532 directly across from you guys. Some of the most effective stuff were his rolls. By the time they got across the stadium it sounded like a stampeding herd.
One thing of interest, when you were trying to distract Brown on the hill with the short blasts, I fear because of the distance of the mound from the O-drum, Brown didn't hear it until after the ball was released. In 532 we'd hear those noises after the pitch was past the batter...just something to keep in mind.
Thanks for the very useful tip, Dave. Mike B, a.k.a. bird droppings drummed most of Saturday's game, with some excellent relief from Alex Obal. Both really brought their A-games. And I love the crazy drum rolls.
Chuck Van Den Corput: My friggin' TV is shaking.
That's what I like to hear!
https://www.battersbox.ca/article.php?story=20040830101455999