Fat_giants_fan
Remember yesterday when I said that the coverage coming out of the Bay Area was lackluster?  Well, it still is, but today, they took a very unnecessary and unfounded cheap shot at Philadelphia.  I am going to spend the next several paragraphs surgically ripping the filth that was written by Bruce Newman ([email protected]) in the Mercury News.  Read on.

Even before the game started, Michael Allen's face was red. This had nothing to do with the 3-0 thrashing his Philadelphia Phillies were about to receive from the Giants — or even with the Schmidt beer that often flows like mother's milk in Phillies fans. Wearing a red and white wig, red and white face paint and a Phils jersey, Allen was a stranger from a strange land at AT&T Park Tuesday.

 

Schmidt beer?  I’m 27, from Philadelphia, and still very much a part of the young drinking crowd.  I have never had a Schmidt beer, I don’t know of any friends who have had a Schmidt beer.  I think my grandfather used to drink it, but that’s about all I know.  Either way, it certainly doesn’t flow like my mother’s milk- then again, what does?

"If you're not giving a good effort in San Francisco, the fans get on you," said Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow, a former Giant who spent part of his career pitching in Philadelphia. "But the intensity level of hate here is probably 30 percent of what it is in Philly. People here can head to the beach, or go up to wine country and calm their anxieties. I just think they have nothing else to do in Philly."

 

Thank you, Mike Krukow.  Yes, we hate everything in Philly.  We hate Santa Claus too, did you know that?  We once threw snowballs at him.  Our children are actually taught to play pin the tail on The Claus.  Fathers teach their sons how to throw batteries before handing them a baseball.  We actually tase puppies just for fun (er, OK- only one of us).  Our youth grow up in a culture of hate.  However, this teen, who was killed just outside the gates of your lovely ballpark, was only beaten with 30% of the hate that we have here in Philadelphia.  In Philly, clearly, someone would have raped him and thrown him in the bay.  That's 70% more hate right there.

All afternoon, the difference between the Bay Area's mellow mob and Philly fans who once booed Santa Claus was apparent. Giants fan Beau Walker dressed in a Giants jersey, his hair transformed to an orange mohawk, with eyebrows and goatee also tinted orange. "Playoff baseball," he explained. "Gotta step it up a notch.”

 

Original.  I already told you, we hate Santa Claus.  And the guy in the orange mohawk was mentioned… to convey peace and love?  The same way the Phillies fan with a wig and face paint was used in that first paragraph to portray the angry, gruff Philly faithful?  How do you spell hypocrite?

Even the ballparks stood in stark counterpoint: The Giants play in a park named after a company that quietly drops your phone calls; the Phillies play in a park sponsored by a bank that forecloses on people's homes.

 

This is written in a respected news source?  This is essentially like calling someone’s Mom fat in 4th grade.  Is that where we’re going with this piece?

As recently as Game 1 of this series, another Schmidt-faced Phils fan was unable to halt the momentum of his bloated beer gut, throwing up onto the field. Video of the incident was later removed from YouTube by Major League Baseball, now the only sports league known to vigorously enforce its vomit copyright.

 

Oh shit.  I was joking.  We’re not more than halfway through the piece and we’re into fat jokes.  By the way, no one in San Francisco is overweight.  Your third basemen, what do you call him, Panda?  He's just so slim and fit.

This season alone, one Phillies fan was shot with a Taser for running onto the field, and another was sentenced to prison after sticking his finger down his throat and purposely vomiting on a nearby fan and his 11-year-old daughter.

 

Nowhere else does this happen.  Only in Philadelphia do fans get tased.  A fan never got tased at an Oakland A's game, one of the teams your publication covers.

Only in Philadelphia do fans run on the field.  False.  That guy who ran onto the field at Yankee Stadium the other night?  He actually wanted to harm A-Rod.  That’s not a joke.  He was carrying pictures of A-Rod and Cameron Diaz and his intent was to HARM one of the game’s best players.  In Philly?  We had a couple of attention-seeking teens make a poor decision.  

His friend Terry Johnson was no fan of the signs that popped up in stands during Game 1, telling Giants ace Tim Lincecum "FIX YOUR TEETH," and calling him "HIPPY TRASH." "I'm shocked by the behavior in Philadelphia," Johnson said. Shocked!

 

Yes, our crude and lewd fans, using words like “teeth” and “hippy.”  The American Dental Association is outraged.  Outraged I tell you!  The hippies of America?  They were too high to give a shit.

San Francisco fans carry much more eloquent signs:  [The700Level]

Giants_fans

The contrast between Giants fans and their Philadelphia counterparts has been evident throughout the series. Bay Area fans waved their orange Homer Hankies at AT&T Park when their team was in the field, while in Philadelphia, the fans swirled white towels that made it more difficult for opposing batters to see the baseball against that background.

 

Yes, all of the fans got together and decided to bring white towels to distract opposing batters (despite an ivy covered brick batters' eye wall) and fielders from catching flyballs that are almost always hit well above a point where the stands serve as a backdrop.  No.  The reality is that the Phillies distrubuted rally towels three years ago (while your sorry ass organization was watching from home) with one of their primary colors.  In an effort to not make Citizen’s Forclosure Park look like a bloody tampon, they choose white.

On the whole, however, fan animus — fanimus! — defines the City of Brotherly Loathe.

Last season, umpires had to halt a Phils game with St. Louis because fans were targeting Cardinals players with the laser pointer dots used as aiming devices by snipers.

 

Yes, snipers also wear sneakers, jackets, and hats.  Lots of people wear those things.  What separates snipers from everyone else?  Not the laser pointers, it’s the HIGH POWERED ASSAULT RIFLES they carry to kill human beings.  Nice analogy.

Mitch Williams told Newman about the real passion of Phillies fans.

"In Philadelphia, they mortgage homes to buy season tickets," said Mitch Williams, a former Phillies relief pitcher known as "Wild Thing" in his playing days, now a broadcaster. "It's not a social event, it's a way of life. They're a blue-collar town, they work hard for their money, and if they don't see a good performance, they're going to let you know."

 

Yes, we boo.  We sometimes have idiots who do dumb things.  But, just as we don’t accuse all San Francisco fans of being murders because one fan was killed during a horrible incident, and just as we don’t accuse all New Yorkers of being vendetta driven psychopaths because one crazy fan ran on the field, please don’t make the horrible mistake of letting nuggets of overplayed, anecdotal data define the masses.  Masses that actually show up to games.  Your team still hasn’t sold out the NLCS.  I’ll use that nugget to define your fan base.  You didn’t sellout your first League Championship Series in seven years.

Now, excuse me while I go teach a baby how to kill kittens.