To Section 425 At Monday’s Phils’ Game

My brothers and sisters,

I know he was asking for it.

You don’t wear Mets gear, in Philadelphia, to a game with 40K Phillies Only fans at it.

You save that kind of stupidity, if you must, for a Mets game where you’ve got some backup. (The Arizona Diamondbacks, with Doug Davis as the starting pitcher, is just not packing in a big crowd.)

I know that $1 hot dogs and the end of a holiday weekend can make people forget themselves. I’ve seen it happen many times.

I also know that the home team was coming off a Snowing in May weekend sweep in Atlanta, bringing them all the way over .500, despite a putrid April start.

So you were more, shall we say enthused, than usual.

You were also correct in your observation that he was fat.

You were also keen in your observations that he probably could have refrained from having the large ice cream cone. Positively trenchant. Something the Algonquin Round Table would have been proud of.

Giving him and his entire group a geographical precise suggestion can be seen as right neighborly.

He might, after all, have been lost.

Offering to send him to the lower levels the fast way may sound like a juvenile violent threat, but I know that you were kidding.

Or that you just wanted them to have a better view.

When he called for security, who clearly had no greater threat than pointing in your general direction – well, I’m going to agree with you again.

That’s a pussy move. You wear the hat, you take the ride.

Finally, I share in your distaste for his wife, girlfriend or relative that decided to stand, turn, and give you the look of condescension.

As if you were naughty schoolchildren that would be cowed by her look of disapproval. The nerve.

However, having said all of that – having given you every possible consideration… and knowing that if I were also liquored up and in my early ‘20s, perhaps, just maybe, I’d also say and do things that I’d regret later…

I’m still pretty sure that I wouldn’t have chanted

ASS HOLE... ASS HOLE... ASS HOLE...

In front of a guy with his seven-year-old daughter.

And another guy with his five-year-old daughter.

Made us all want to become Phillies fans, it did.

From Far, Far Away.

The final, most telling thing I can say about the matter…

This never happened to us in… Oakland.

Moving on.