Remembering the day I rooted for the A’s
It was four years ago on a cool Monday night when my friend and
I went to a baseball game. It was Memorial Day and it was the
Oakland Athletics versus the Boston Red Sox.
Remembering the day I rooted for the A’s
It was four years ago on a cool Monday night when my friend and I went to a baseball game. It was Memorial Day and it was the Oakland Athletics versus the Boston Red Sox.
I was not an A’s fan by any means (and I’m still not), but because I was in Oakland and they were playing the Red Sox…well, needless to say I was rooting for the A’s to win.
I had been to a ton of baseball games in my life, and many Giants-Dodgers games, but not one of those games prepared me for the chaos I witnessed that night.
Because my friend is a die-hard A’s fan, I knew that A’s fans strongly disliked the Red Sox and their fans. This was, of course, because the Red Sox seemingly own the A’s on the playing field in the playoffs year in and year out.
As the game on this particular night progressed, the Red Sox got further and further ahead and the A’s fans got more and more testy. I knew this game was one bad call away from getting out of hand.
Sure enough, in the eighth inning with the A’s rallying, a line drive was hit to Manny Ramirez, the Red Sox left fielder. He didn’t catch the ball; he trapped it to the ground and made it look like he caught it. The umpire bought it and called the out. The crowd lost it and it was the loudest I had ever heard a stadium get at disapproval of a call.
Soon things were being thrown out onto the field at Manny and even the umpires and fans were yelling from every direction. Things escalated when Pedro Martinez, a pitcher for the Red Sox at the time, went out onto the field and started taunting the A’s fans.
That is when I got caught up in the emotion of the game and shouted my views about the call and Pedro’s actions out to the field. Then a Red Sox fan about seven or eight rows back threw an empty cup at me and shouted profanities. I turned around in anger and shouted back at him. The confrontation started to intensify, and soon he actually wanted to fight me because he was a Red Sox fan and I was an A’s fan.
That’s when it hit me. I wasn’t even an A’s fan. What was I doing out there yelling at the umpires about a call made against a team that I didn’t even root for on any other day? The only answer that I had to that question was that I let my emotions about baseball get the best of me. So I turned around quickly to avoid further conflict with the Red Sox fan – who was much bigger than I was.
As I thought about the situation I was just in, I stood there quietly without a shout because I did not want to upset any other big, drunk Red Sox fans. I watched my friend and many other A’s fans around me who were still frustrated over the call and what transpired out on the field the previous inning continue to yell out towards the field.
Then I realized that I was still upset over the call and wondered what could have happened if that was called a hit rather than an out.
It was not that I was upset because I was rooting for the A’s, but mostly it was because I am passionate about baseball and I got caught up in the emotion.
But what true fan is not passionate about their team and their sport? Even locally there is passion for sports of every kind, whether it is high school sports or recreational sports.
It is because of that passion that from that Monday night on I became an A’s fan, but only when they play the Red Sox.
Being the Giants fan that I am, that is the only time I can get away with rooting for the team from across the bay.
