Baseball Jackassery

I went to my last baseball game of the season tonight. It was a crappy game -- the Nats lost to the Marlins big time, and almost none of the big name players, to the extent there are any, even took the field. And it was cold.

I left early.

This is unusual for me: I almost always stay until the end of the game -- regardless of score or weather or a dearth of stars. But tonight, in addition to the crappy game, I was annoyed by two things -- people actually -- and just wanted to get the heck out of Dodge.

First of all, our seats are right near this guy that I refer to as "Baseball Wesley Willis." For the uninformed, Wesley Willis was a 300 pound schizophrenic dude who wrote these crazy little songs performed on a Casio keyboard. He is probably most famous for "I Wupped Batman's Ass" -- which is quite possibly the best song of all time.



Okay, I kid. But it's pretty friggin' hilarious. And awesome.

Anyway, Baseball Wesley Willis does his own version of performance art. He stands up, holds either a beer bottle or a pen in front of his mouth as if it were a microphone, and shouts "Can I have your attention please?" and announces each and every pitching change or pinch hitter, and then either (1) makes a joke about their name; (2) comments on the weather or the stadium concessions; or (3) says something unintelligible that sounds like "Oulet creuset boulet boulet."

He apparently started doing this at the old stadium, where the loudspeakers weren't so good. But in the new stadium, where people can actually hear the announcer and read the scoreboard, he is just, well, annoying and loud.

This is even more so since he has taken to doing this while standing right in front of me.



I try to ignore him, thinking maybe he'll go away or stand somewhere else. But the asinine people around me seem to think it's a novelty act, and applaud him -- and he keeps doing it.

Grrrr.

But it gets worse. Today, in addition to Baseball Wesley Willis, there was a girl sitting right behind us who shreiked, approximately once per inning, at the very top of her lungs.

This was not a particularly little girl -- I would guess that she was somewhere between 7 and 10, which means that she was old enough to know better. And her parents were sitting there right there next to her -- but NOT ONCE did either of them do anything to stop this.

In fact, they didn't seem to mind -- not even when people looked at her (and them) in sheer annoyance. If it were my kid, I'd have been mortified.

Anyway, I'd like to thank these people for letting their jackassery totally ruin my last baseball game of the season. But not all was lost: I came home tonight to an email from TINGB, forwarding this article:

Hot Dogs Force Evacuation At Citizens Bank Park

PHILADELPHIA (CBS 3) ― The discovery of several hot dogs in packages outside Citizens Bank Park brought the bomb squad out and forced the temporary evacuation of the stadium Wednesday evening.

According to police, Pattison Street between Darien and 11th Streets was shutdown as officials investigated the discovery of several suspicious packages near a ticket office.

Fans inside the stadium were evacuated, but players remained on the field during the incident.

Bomb squad members further investigated the packages and determined they were simply several hot dogs in foil wrappers. Sadly, the wieners were detonated as a precaution.

The stadium was reopened at about 5:20 p.m.

"It was clear from when we looked at it at first glance and when you looked at the debris afterwards, there was packaging and duct tape; I don't see many hot dogs sold here with duct tape," Phillies VP of Operations Michael Stiles said. "We just did what we felt was appropriate."

The Phillies take on the Atlanta Braves at 7:05 p.m. on Wednesday evening.

I guess my night could have been worse: No one had to detonate my hot dog.