Idiots Write About Sports

I went to a baseball game in Anaheim last week. Or perhaps it was in Los Angeles. I’m not really sure which. It was somewhere up in that conglomeration of smog and traffic that lies north of Camp Pendleton, and the team wore red, which I’m pretty certain makes them the Angels. Or, as two-thirds of the players and staff actually refer to the team in their internal dialogues, “los Angeles.”

But never mind. The point of this post is not to become the seven-millionth person to criticize Arte Moreno’s goofy new nomenclature. If the guy wants to refer to his team by a name that inherently pisses off every resident of Orange County – many of whom spend up to six hours a day angrily informing tourists that, “Orange County isn’t Los Angeles” – then more power to him. It takes a bold new owner to irritate people right out of the gate, completely skipping over the three days it usually takes for fans to find something to bitch about.

It had been a while since I’d been to Angel Stadium. The last time I took in a game there, Brian Downing was on the cover of the program. I’m told that some changes have been made to the place in the intervening years. Frankly, I wouldn’t know the difference, since twenty-odd years ago I was a lot more interested in running up and down the ramps and pestering my parents for a sundae in a batting helmet than in actually paying attention to my surroundings.

As far as I can tell, the fruits of the $118 million dollar renovation are: an unobstructed view of the tangle of terminally clogged freeway arteries behind center field, and a pile of fake rocks that spew milky fluid and flaming balls of gunpowder whenever the home team sends one out. There’s also a bunch of “interactive” batting cages and other stuff for the younger crowd to do during the game. These were presumably put in because the club couldn’t figure out a way to charge an extra ten bucks for kids to run up and down the ramps for three hours.

But I’m not writing this to denigrate the ballpark, either; not when there’s something at Angel Stadium that’s ever so much more horrible than the perpetual money shot out in center field…

So anyway, my sainted mother wanted a Rally Monkey. She’s been an Angels supporter through thick and thin for thirty years, but she’s recently been feeling like somewhat of a second-class fan because she does not have a plush simian of her own to shake feebly at the television. As it happens, a recent business trip brought me to a hotel room a couple of miles from the stadium, so I decided to be a good son and buy my mom a monkey.

After purchasing my ticket beneath a huge and slightly embarrassing wrought-iron cap, I picked up my obligatory beer and dog, and ascended to my rightful place in the nosebleeds. I’d arrived fairly late, but it was still the bottom of the first, thanks to a four-run shellacking the Angels had doled out to opposing pitcher Kenny Rogers. Evidently the Texas coaching staff had not adequately prepared Rogers for all the cameras that would be in the stands, and he was having difficulty maintaining his focus through the fiery red miasma of anti-camera loathing roiling in his brain.

The Rangers’ half of the inning passed uneventfully, after which I sat back to take in the local flavor of between-inning scoreboard entertainment. “What will it be?” I wondered. “Wacky bloopers? The batting helmet shell game? Pick the Horribly Overplayed ‘Stadium Favorite’ That Will Be Blared Over the P.A. Next Inning?”

“Hey, that looks kinda like…”

“…a crummy commercial?! Son of a bitch!”

And it was.

That’s right, apparently not content to cover every square centimeter of the outfield wall with advertising, the Angels have seen fit to cover the Jumbotron*, too. And while I do appreciate being made aware of the incredible convenience and friendly spirit that are in abundance at my local Wells Fargo branch, I can’t help but feel that when I shell out twelve bucks for a seat in the mesosphere, I shouldn’t have to deal with TV ads that I can get at home for free. Ads that, in fact, I specifically came to the stadium to get the hell away from.

I’ll admit to not being a terribly well-traveled fan, so it’s possible that this sort of thing is par for the course at a lot of stadiums these days. Certainly the Angels’ faithful around me didn’t seem fazed in the slightest by the crass commercialism. But I’d never had to deal with between-innings commercials before and, frankly, it kind of soured the whole experience for me.

The game turned out to be a rout, so after a couple more innings I headed to the team store. I couldn’t even offer up a perfunctory smile to the clerk as he handed me the monkey and exhorted me not to spank it. As I walked into the twilight of the parking lot, I thought I could hear Gene Autry, whirring gently in his grave. Or perhaps it was Charles Schulz.

* I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that Microsoft Word summarily rejects my spelling of the word “Jumbotron.” Instead, it helpfully suggests either “Umberto” or “Jumbo Ron.” Exactly how “Jumbo Ron” made its way into Word’s database of common English phrases is a mystery, but I bet it’s a hell of a story.

Nice impersonation of Michaels' writing, Steve. I did have to look up "mesosphere" in my American Heritage. By the way, Arte Moreno did make his zillions of pesos in......pregnant pause.......billboard advertising. And I'm glad your mom stuck with them after the '86 Donnie Moore debacle.

I'm not sure whether that statement was intended as a compliment to me or as an insult to Phil. Either way, thank you.

As for Mom, well... when your other local rootin' option is the Dodgers, you find that you can suffer a Donnie Moore or two. Though I believe it was after that fateful Henderson homer that I first discovered that mom knew just as many colorful obsecenities as dad.

That's horrible. Bad enough we've got commercials in movie theaters now. (Props to Regal Cinemas for airing their 20 minutes of commercials before the scheduled start time, and starting right in with movie trailers at the promised time. I love this idea so much I don't mind being their shill.) But at a baseball game, where there's no shortage of advertising to be found? Yuck.

The Mariners, as of about a month ago anyway, have not yet succumbed to this godawful idea. So I deem it to be abnormal.

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