Something happened at Opening Weekend in Los Angeles which just disgusted me.
Anyone who's taken a walk in the area around Dodger Stadium knows it's not a pretty sight -- not that unakin to Oakland and the Network Associates Coliseum.
But it's Giants Weekend as well as the opener, and it sounds like one Giants fan has paid for it with his life.
Bryan Stow was a 42 year old paramedic.
He's about to die because of the fact that he wore the wrong colors in a gang war in Los Angeles' turf.
He was not a Crip, nor a Blood.
He was a Giants fan at the Dodgers-Giants opener in Dodger Stadium.
He is still in a medically induced coma, and there is no question in my mind that they will eventually have to turn off the switch.
I make reference to Galatasray, one of the most infamous clubs in Turkey, to harken back to the 2000 UEFA Cup semifinal series with Leeds United of England. Several Leeds supporters were killed in Turkey because they dared support their team in the opposition's turf.
Brian Tuohy makes repeated reference in the start of his book "The Fix is In" to the fan mentality which has run amok. He also, on his website, quotes Howard Cosell in his book I Never Played the Game about what Cosell calls Sports Syndrome.
Cosell put out six points as to the basis of Sports Syndrome, and I'd like to harken on a couple of them as it relates to this murderous disgrace in Los Angeles:
1. The game is sacrosanct—a physical and almost religious ritual of beauty and art.
I have made clear on repeated occasion that one of the major problems with sports (and I've had it exposed to me by very close friends across the spectrum of people I know) is that The Game has become Religion. The Sport has become EVERYTHING, and to subsume all else. Given this, would it not surprise one that the Dodger fans (those prone to violence and who hate the "Hated Ones", as the Giants are called) would treat it a personal affront and an invasion of gang turf if one Giants fan showed up, with the predictable result (see later)...
2. Only those who have played the game can understand and communicate its beauty.
Not really of the greatest relevance here, but one has to wonder if this is part of some of the sanctification of the process, like this one...
3. All athletes are heroes, to the point where some are cast as surrogate parents in the American home.
One has to wonder if this is not just "parents" -- a recent study showed that violent incidents increased 10% on Sundays in NFL cities where teams were favored and upset (versus other NFL Sundays).
4. Winning isn’t everything…it’s the only thing! (Something Vincent T. Lombardi never said!)
And if that victory is a defense of one's turf that kills somebody and you win the game, is that even more so?? MADNESS!
5. Sport is Camelot. It is not a place for truth—only for escape, for refuge from life.
The key here being that there is no place for the actual truth. This leads to the ultimate point vis-a-vis this incident:
6. The fan is sacred, even as sports are. He pays the freight, thus he is an entitled being. The media people tell him this every day. Therefore, once within the arena, his emotions whetted by the Sports Syndrome, the fan adopts what John Stewart Mill found to be the classic confusion in the American thought process, the confusion between Liberty and License—a natural and probable consequence of which is fan violence.
These dogs (and I live in Southern California) felt they had the license to beat the shit out of anyone who talked smack and wore a Giants jersey.
Talking smack, to an extent, is part of any sports situation. I once was in the front row, watching a holiday tournament involving my university at the time (The University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire) while they were #1 in the NAIA polls in 1992.
They were playing Hawaii-Hilo in the designated "home game" of the tournament, and, after some contention about a call from the Hilo coach, I yelled out "SIT DOWN, COACH!!!"
We've all heard it a hundred times and done it a few.
The coach stopped, looked right at me, and put his hands out to say, "OK, I'll sit down... Yeesh."
The next night, after the third-place game, I walked over to the same coach (on no one's order but my own), shook his hand, apologized, and wished him well.
I'm no saint when it comes to fandom, but there is a fucking difference between good-natured ribbing (especially in a rivalry like Giants-Dodgers) and KILLING SOMEBODY OVER IT...
I know that the police in LA pressured everybody for draconian security, but, sadly, there appeared only one solution.
If the pig-fuckers who wish to be violent want to turn American sports stadiums into their European and South American soccer counterparts, then exact the same punishment: Play games with NO FANS allowed inside.
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