Sunday, 19 April 2009

• 'eyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Martinez! (a salute to the heckler)

  I don't much care for baseball.
  
  (sorry.)
  
  It's one of those sports, like soccer or lacrosse or hockey, that are fun to watch live and in person but insufferably boring on television. Living in Avery, though, means living approximately 50 feet away from the entrance to the gorgeous, newly renovated Boshamer baseball stadium, and when a good segment of guys on this floor are baseball players I actually know, trekking over there is generally an enjoyable experience. But I have one rule: if I go alone I never stay more than three or four innings, because taking in a whole game by yourself can be intolerably dull.
  
  It was therefore a treat to spend a few exciting innings on the third base line last night for the UNC-Miami game with Keegan and his girlfriend (and his girlfriend's parents, turns out. Being introduced as the good friend of an ACC champion wrestler, uh, yeah. It's pretty cool).
  
  The game was excellent, as well-pitched games generally are, but the evening was made even more enjoyable by a group of four or five guys sitting two rows behind us--true hecklers, of the most entertaining sort.
  
  Baseball is the only sport I can think of where real heckling is even feasible anymore. Most other sports are too fast-paced to allow it, and the crowd is either too far away from the field to do any good or so loud that the mass noise drowns out the individual. But baseball is a game of long stretches of relative quiet where most of the people on the field aren't doing much of anything, and so a well-placed fan can actually do some damage.
  
  We only arrived in the bottom of the sixth inning, so I don't know for sure how long these guys had it in for the poor third baseman, but they were relentless. Every ten seconds or so, one of them would call out "Eyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, Martinez!" (It's times like this I'm glad our own players don't have their names on their jerseys.) "I'm in your head, Martinez!" one yelled. They didn't even curse or make cracks about his mother or any of the cliche heckler tricks. It was all clean, but it was still amazing. After half an inning of defense the poor kid was up to bat, and the guys greeted his walk to the plate with a rousing "EYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY it's Martinez! Come on, Martinez, let's earn that scholarship now!" When he swung hard at a pitch and whiffed air, he could only look forward to "Awwww Martinez, I could feel the breeze from up here, man!" Priceless.
  
  Today was even better. The second game of the series began at four, and the first inning was finally over some 40 minutes later. We sat on the first base line today in the student section, and they gave the Hurricanes first baseman no mercy. At one stretch the pitcher must have tried to get the man on first out about eight times in a row. Someone who was keeping count called "0 for 12, Hagerty, 0 for 12! Kinda like your batting average yesterday." Ouch!
  
  (Carolina won both games, by the way. :D)
  
  Some might say that heckling is unsportsmanlike behavior, but I say that as long as it's clever without being vulgar, it should be encouraged as much as possible. Baseball would be so much less entertaining if all the hecklers were gone. So to all the tipsy loudmouths who let the pitcher know just how bad he sucks, I salute you.
  

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