Away Games

My friend Josh is on the coaching staff for the Malden Green Wave football team. Josh has been my friend for a thousand years, and he attended a lot of my church softball games when I used to play, and he made sure to heckle the umpires to boot. So I thought it would only be appropriate to catch a Green Wave football game here and there. It was either that or sit at home and count how many crickets got in the house that night (four crickets is the standing record), so I'm pretty sure I made the right choice in going.

I didn't actually make any trips to Malden this season, but I did manage to catch three away games--twice the Green Wave played the Scott City Rams at Scott City (once for the season opener, and once for the Class 2 regional playoff), and once I saw them in Chaffee against the Red Devils. And if there's one thing I've learned from attending these away games, it's that it's your goal as a fan of the away team to be as loud and obnoxious as humanly possible. You can't pick fights with the home fans, and you still have to be supportive of your team, but beyond that, the gloves are off.

This is one of the areas in sports in which I'll allow myself to be a tad (nay, very) hypocritical about my behavior. When I'm at Busch Stadium and I see some Mets fans walking around in their Jose Reyes jerseys, they ain't getting past me without receiving the stinkiest of stink eyes, and they better keep their mouths shut during the game. They better sit on their hands all game long and like it when their pitcher gets squeezed by the home plate umpire and the Cardinals hit eight doubles over the first three innings and build a comfortable lead. They better keep their "MVP!" chants to themselves when David Wright is at bat, and they better not be picking the urinal next to me when I'm in the men's room and there are six other urinals available. Dumb Mets fans--who do they think they are?!

But hypothetically speaking, if it's me in my Cardinals gear at Citi Field (or whatever the Mets' new stadium is called), getting cheesed off when Joel Pineiro gives up five runs in the first, and if it's me chanting "MVP!" when Pujols is at the plate, and if it's me just generally making a big buffoon of myself, then that's okay. Because it's me.

I didn't used to be this way. I used to behave at away games, sitting quietly and hoping not to get killed by some drunk homer. I've been to a couple of Cardinals-Cubs games at Wrigley, and couldn't even think of a proper comeback when they told me I was wearing the wrong hat. They were the ones wearing the wrong hat! But I didn't think to tell them that until it was too late. My brother at least had the intestinal fortitude to shout back in our defense whenever we took a bunch of heat because it was the third game in the series and the Cardinals had just been swept. I, on the other hand, just wanted to get back to the car without somebody lighting my Cardinals jersey on fire.

There was also a time in the fall of 2002 when my brother and I went to an Eagles-Bears game when Soldier Field was being renovated and the Bears were playing their home games at the University of Illinois in Champaign. The weather was cold, windy, and having a lot of trouble deciding whether it wanted to rain or snow. We sat huddled in ponchos, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible with our Eagles hats and shirts clearly visible through the transparent ponchos. I guess we were pretty embarrassed because the Eagles barely survived against what was a vastly inferior Bears team that season. Anyway, after the game there were a bunch of drunk Eagles fans trying to pick fights with the legions of Bears fans surrounding them as everybody made the trek back to their cars, and I was terrified of being lumped in with the rest of the Eagles fans, murdered, and walled up in the basement of one of the buildings on campus. We did escape with our lives, but after that experience I just wanted to "not be a jerk" and avoid causing trouble as a fan of the away team. (It should also be noted my Cardinals antenna-ball from Jack In the Box was stolen during this game. I guess I should have expected that would happen, being Cubs country and all, but it still aggravated me.)

The only problem I see now is that that kind of attitude takes half the fun out of the experience of attending an away game, so I've loosened up a little bit and, with the company of a group of equally enthusiastic family or friends, am willing to do my part as one of the "bad guys."

There were only three of us at the Chaffee game, so we didn't do too much there. The Scott City games, on the other hand, were a different story altogether, in which our cavalcade of Green Wave supporters ascended the bleachers with an enthusiasm and intensity unknown to mankind and pulled out all stops in trying to be louder than the entire Scott City fanbase, and as irritating to them as possible. If all of our matching green tye-dye, face paint and ridiculous costumes didn't fill them with an incredible rage, then surely our perpetual barrage of chants, cheers, jeers, and general noise made them want to cross the field of play, drag us from our seats and engage in unwholesome fisticuffs under the bleachers. (We even scared some of Malden's own fans sitting around us at one of the games into seeking out other seats away from us, to give you an idea of our effort.) Also, for the season opener, we brought our infamous "hands," which are big hands cut out of green foam-core, taped to sticks and waved in the air. (Green wave...get it?)

And when the clock hit 00:00, I was back to my normal self--the guy who can't promise that you'll get more than just a smile if you say hello to him. But for those couple of hours on opposing soil, all that stuff about being nice and quite was out the door. And when I found out how much Josh and Malden appreciated our support, I felt even better about it.

I was a bad guy, and I liked it. But hey, it's all in good fun. It's sports, and we weren't jerks. We just made absolutely certain that our voices were heard in supporting our team on the road.

Things might be a little different the next time I find myself in Wrigleyville.