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BUCKY FOX |
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Where are baseball's
most rabid fans?
By BUCKY FOX
of TheColumnists.com
Now here’s a fan: Joe Serrano.
He flies from El Paso to Los Angeles to catch Dodger games.
He chants and claps along with the scoreboard and organist.
He recites the home team’s batting breakdown and the enemy pitcher’s numbers.
He laments the disappearance of the Think Blue sign that for years sat on a hill beyond Dodger Stadium.
He’s embarrassed to admit his girlfriend back home doesn’t back the Dodgers. That elicits a "WHAT!?" from a woman fan in our right field section. Yes, incredible as it sounds, Joe puts up with a non-Dodger fan for a girlfriend. He promises he’s working on her.
You get the picture? Joe Serrano loves his team. And he wears that Dodger blue on his sleeve. Or at least on the letters of the jersey he picked up on this Shawn Green T-shirt night at the stadium.
Bless Joe and his ilk. They’re the backbone of baseball. Of all big-league sports. Barry Bonds and Kobe Bryant and Tom Brady and Keith Primeau provide the muscle. But if no one watched, the games would look weak.
Joe Serrano was all strength on a recent Friday night. The Cincinnati Reds were in town, and he and 53,000 other fans bulked up Dodger Stadium with their loud loyalty. The Dodgers themselves were brittle, losing 2-1. That hardly deterred the throng, which did the wave, punched the beach ball and showed off those Shawn Green shirts all nine innings.
That was the easy part. All 53,000 sat through L.A.’s notorious traffic to make the game. Then they sat in an hour’s bottleneck to leave Chavez Ravine.
Talk about endurance. Paul Lo Duca can squat nearly every night at the catching position. Cesar Izturis and Alex Cora can stop every ground ball up the middle. Eric Gagne can make good on every save situation. Yet in Los Angeles, the ones who hang in there the most consistently are the fans: at least 30,000 enduring that traffic every single home game. It’s a battle on these highways, and Dodger backers are hardened.
Are they the best fans on our continent? Let’s look at the contenders:
Chicago Cub fans. They’re everywhere. They pack Wrigley Field. They jam their spring training stadium in Mesa, Ariz. They flow into stadiums around the National League. They’re really national fans, and this for a team that hasn’t won the World Series since "President Roosevelt" meant Teddy Roosevelt.
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THAT YOU HOPE DOESN'T SIT NEARBY |
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Green Bay Packer fans. They freeze in the Lambeau stands. And humiliate themselves with those cheese hats. And follow their team to the ends of the turf. At least the Pack returns the favor with championships.
Montreal Canadien fans. As great as Hab history is, they haven’t won the Stanley Cup in 11 years. That hasn’t zapped zeal for the red, white and blue. Here’s how their site puts it: “For the second straight year, the Canadiens led the NHL in attendance, welcoming 1,041,830 fans to the Bell Centre over the course of the 2003-04 season. The team’s final 18 home games were played before sellout crowds, while the club saw 24 of its 41 games in all welcome a full house of 21,273 supporters.”
Los Angeles Clipper fans. How do they persevere? Their team goes nowhere fast every season. Yet fans hang on for the ride in surprisingly big numbers. Toward the end of this season, 18,000 of them filled Staples Center to cheer their boys against the men of San Antonio. You would’ve thought the Lakers were out there from the sound of it. Right in front of me was a couple that had a conniption every time Tim Duncan and Tony Parker touched the ball. Otherwise likeable fans, they told me after the inevitable Clipper loss that they attend every game. Damn the traffic.
Those Clipper supporters give Dodger fans a run in L.A.
Yet no one can top Joe Serrano for pure devotion. In the middle of that Red-Dodger game, another L.A. fan had the temerity to grouse over a Green double-play grounder with “Shawn Green sucks.” When Green later made a diving catch in right, Joe turned to the traitor and said, “What do you think of him now?”
The Dodgers can be glad Joe will be back expressing his ardor next month for the big Yankee series. He’ll be taking his girlfriend on the flight from Texas.
By then he should have
convinced her to bleed Dodger blue.
©2004 by Bucky Fox. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master
Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506,
USA.
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