The Bronx Cheer
New Yawkahs are known for their love of sports, their awesome feel for what's going on in the action, their willingness to boo a player out of town, and their no-baloney attitude about it. In no particular order.
Play along with Jemanji's bizarro world of rampaging elephants, swarming toucans, and D-Ray scrub squads finishing ahead of $220 million rosters.
Should players be booed? Not, do we fans have the right to. Not, are we going to. Not, do we feel like it. But, is it OKAY okay? Is it a guilty pleasure, or is there nothing guilty about it?
Big Poppa Jemanji sez:
...................
Q. Should fans boo their own players?
A. The jemanji mainframe returns completely different answers to that question on the back end, depending on which paradigm you input on the front end. :- )
1) Do I "play it the way I feel it," like Lindsay and Stevie? Doesn't take a nanosecond to process the answer, if that's the input you feed the machine. As you mighta guessed, we a little higher, philosophically, than using "Hedonism" to solve The Great Riddles Of Our Era, such as booing.
2) Or, am I asking, "do I have the right to boo?" That's a subtly, but significantly, different answer. What would Miss Manners say? (She's actually answered the question.)
3) How about asking based on, "is it productive? What's the ROI?" You see how difficult that Dr. Jemanji can make an easy question :- )
If we ask, "Should Jack McDowell throw a snit fit at a few boos after a year of losing games for the fans, or should he cowboy up?", that's returns crunch #4…
5) How about, "Is booing inherently more objectionable than a newspaper op-ed that rips a player to shreds?," that's reply #5…
6) If I ask, "Is it okay based on doing unto others? I mean, I would accept booing myself…" that's yet another one. Is it okay with you, when the players boo the fans?
We could list a dozen… Dr. Jemanji has a favorite paradigm here.
..............
Q. Do I have the right?
A. Sure you do. You pay your money and it is clearly understood, with the people who sell you the ticket, that you can express your opinion of the action.
.
Q. Is it rude to express negative opinions at the ballpark?
A. Probably not. Miss Manners :- ) ruled that when one is attending a public performance, and invited to express one's opinion, it is probably not even impolite to (at least) sit coldly silent — after all, standing ovations would lose their meaning if they were simply rote behavior.
.
Q. Is booing at the park any different than Dick Schaap or Jemanji writing that a ballplayer isn't a major leaguer?
A. Very.
This is neither here nor there, but it is one thing for a supervisor to bring an employee in for a well-considered work review (and to tell him that he's not performing adequately), and another thing for a supervisor to curse an employee because the supervisor is having a cruddy day.
It is one thing for a loving parent to paddle his child in a considered attempt to impress authority, security, love and boundaries. It's a different (and wrong) thing for a parent to take out the frustrations of the day on a child who makes a mistake.
Booing is just venting. It's in the category of mindless frustration (98% of the time). I never boo the home players.
.
Q. Is it counterproductive?
A. I suspect that booing does nothing other than HELP the home team win more games.
Fans in NY, Chicago, Boston, expect excellence from their teams. Soccer Mom in Seattle doesn't much care whether the ballclub wins the pennant or not. That has a little something to do with the histories of each franchise, respectively.
……………………..
Players will "threaten" to not love us any more, if they get booed. They're just venting back. They're ticked off, short-term, that they're being booed, but it's forgotten as soon as things are going better.
There are exceptions. Ted Williams, his whole career, bitterly resented "frontrunners, the fans who are booing you when you strike out and leading the cheers when you hit a home run." A famous line out of Boston … when Teddy hit his last home run, he could literally have been elected mayor if he'd tipped his cap to the fans. "I just couldn't," he said.
ARod is certainly very bitter about the reaction he got back in Seattle. It can happen.
………………………..
Booing does impress accountability and expectation. It ratchets up the fear of failure, which is key to giving one's best effort.
.
Q. You said that YOU don't boo. Why's that?
A. It's a lot more fun to kid myself that every player in the Yankee organization is part of a broader New York family and community.
If you're loyal to the family in the bad times, it makes the good times 100x more fun. :- ) The relationships like the ones with Yogi and Scooter are what give baseball its own flavor.
Most of the time, it's worth trying to cultivate a pseudo-love relationship with the home team. Especially come playoff time …
Tough to boo them in August and then expect a Willie Stargell "We Are Family" dance routine in October.
……………………
.
Q. Is it fair to boo home players? What if I would accept it myself, if the roles were reversed?
A. If the players ever expressed pointed, live disapproval of the fans, I suspect that the fans would be quite enraged.
Jack McDowell got boo'ed here and flipped off the fans. I was perfectly okay with that (in principle, discounting the obscenity). Fair's fair. But most fans would hate ARod for life if he rounded the bases and then flipped off the fans.
If that's the case, you shouldn't be booing! If you can't eat it, don't dish it out, bro'...
.
Q. Is it understandable that a Jack Black would get his feelings hurt, or is it kind of chickenfeathers?
A. "Chickenfeathers," ahem, is the term we use to describe both pettiness/smallmindedness, and weak knees. It's the opposite of magnanimosity and it's kind of yin/feminine, no offense to females who are the superior gender of the species…
I don't want to use the word "whine," but…
Listen. Athletes are accustomed to $10,000,000 per year income, accustomed to the ladies and the ritzy plane flights, and they are accustomed to the fawning. It doesn't leave a good impression on me when they cry about receiving 2% criticism with all of the hero worship.
Baseball players are 100x worse than any other athlete on this score. They burst into tears if an opponent takes too long trotting around the bases on a home run. "Don't show me up," is their protest, and they are quite precious about it. The MLB player's ego protections would be silly if they were only a tenth of what they are.
There are writers and reviewers and bloggers who have a real sweet tooth for praise, and who bristle at the slightest criticism or even disagreement… listen, it's not a manly frame of mind. If y'can't eat it, don't dish it out…
That said, at least Richie cares. And to be fair, if you or I sung a National Anthem and got booed, we'd probably be traumatized. :- )
My own marching orders would be to support hard-working players who are getting bad breaks, even if they're a little overmatched, and to boo a couple of front-office suits we could name. But that's just us.
Enjoy,
jemanji
....................
Image source: http://musicandsports.bossaball.net/wp-images/McDowell-baseball-rocker.jpg
