High Quality Stupid

SJ and I sat in the top row of my family's favorite place in the park (if you can't be on field level, of course, which most of us can't most of the time) on Thursday night; the Upper Deck Boxes, right behind home. in the last row of the Upper Reserved section behind us sat an extremely loud, enthusiastic, and as it turned out, drunk couple. the Boyfriend was a Phillies fan, the Girlfriend a Mets fan.

for the first four innings, in between each pitch, they called out their slogans; "Sit him down, Moyer" from him, "Let's go Tommy, sit him down!" from her. they weren't the only reliable screamers in this section-- there was also a guy behind us who, at least three times each inning that Jamie Moyer pitched, yelled "Suck it, Moy-ah!" in his deep Long Island accent. perhaps the most annoying/amusing (and really, it would be hard to distinguish between the two at most points in the evening, though we laughed about it a lot) was the constant repetition of the same harangues over and over, with almost no reduction in enthusiasm as the game wore on. As SJ commented when the woman in front of as mentioned that they might at least say something new, "these are not likely to be the most creative individuals we've ever encountered."

Of course, there was some evolution in their cries as the game progressed; full last names got shortened or nicknamed (Glavine went from Tommy to T to Glav in three innings out of the Girlfriend's mouth) at some point in the top of the 3rd, the Girlfriend started screaming "Tommy, where'se your youth at?" at Glavine. It took all the willpower in my body not to turn around and explain to the Girlfriend that his youth had gone at some point in the 41 years since his birth, and that was perfectly appropriate.

SJ was sure they'd be done with the active screaming by the 4th-- turned out she was half right.




this video is not in any way interesting for its visual content; it's all for the audio of the "Suck it" guy and the Girlfriend.



in the top of the 4th, the Girlfriend suddenly stopped cheering. when the Boyfriend went to the bathroom, SJ turned to see why she'd shut up and found that the Girlfriend had passed out.



this didn't stop the Boyfriend from continuing his constant cheering and jeering. at some point late in the game he started the begging-- "can we just score some runs?! is that too much to ask?!" and the "where's the pitch? where. is. that. pitch?!" you can hear him pleading in the video above, again not visually interesting but taken for the audio. so sad. so drunk.

the Boyfriend left the Girlfriend passed out a couple of times, but when he was in the stands he was engaging in an ever-escalating verbal pissing match with one of the guys in a group of five who happened to be sitting just across the stairs from SJ and me.




eventually, the Girlfriend woke up and got into it with the antagonist in our row. "You're not even a real fan," she screamed. "You're not even wearing a jersey!" The antagonist pulled off his jacket to reveal that he was indeed wearing a jersey, at which point the Girlfriend came down to the boxes and pulled off her sweatshirt, screaming "you don't even know who I'm rocking! I'm rocking the Reyes, I'm a real fan!"

(you may be able to tell from the picture above of the final confrontation that she's actually wearing a Doc Gooden t-shirt, conferring on her a longer-standing fandom than Reyes would, but also a questionable attitude toward substance abuse. this picture was taken right before she fell on her ass.)

the Boyfriend got involved, and then Security got involved, and the Boyfriend wasn't sober enough to know that protesting wasn't going to help, and the last time we saw him he was face first against the wall behind the stands, being handcuffed.