Hey, What About Those [Your Favorite Team]!

[MysticalDescent]

Seeing as Enty beat me to an answer, I must now ask an all new question, this time about crowd culture, although I don't particularly like that term.

I read somewhere that in the MLS, teams have gone out of their way to ban supporters from shouting 'you suck, objectionable person' at opposition goalkeepers when they take a goal kick. It seemed faintly ridiculous, as it's such a childish, barely offensive insult that it barely merited any kind of intervention at all. The only time I can recall anybody getting in any trouble for something like that in this country was when some Tottenham supporters were convicted and banned from attending football matches a few years ago. This guy does a half decent article on it that includes the words to the song that was directed at Sol Campbell, which are a bit shocking and possibly offensive so don't go there if you're not up for that sort of stuff. At Stoke we haven't done anything quite as bad as that, but we've been the subject of criticism from various no-mark journalists for being too angry and too offensive and upsetting opposition players. Generally, though, pretty much anything goes. It's the way it is. My question is twofold. Firstly, am I actually right about the 'you suck objectionable person' thing and secondly, if I am, then is that sort of thing entirely frowned upon in sports in North America? Are there widespread sweary and bawdy verses cascading down from the stands, or are things pretty sanitised? Is the outlook/mindset of a sports supporter in North America entirely different to the mindset of football supporters in this country?

Oh, one other one. How much does it generally cost to attending sporting events, both major and minor?

[chrismachine]

Ok, I'll preface this by saying that I have yet to attend an MLS game in either Toronto or Montreal. That said, over here it is novel when things get sung or shouted, and in hockey at least it usually is just the patterned repetition of the opposition goaltender's name after he makes a shaky play or shows some nerves, or lets in a goal. Sometimes you get "ref you suck" and at one point a coach mused during the playoffs that the other team's home fans barely registered, let alone bothered his team. The next game when they were getting pumped the crowd organized a "can you hear us" chant that was easily 15k of the 20k in attendance. The coach was Bruce Boudreau, whose surname you can hear chanted at the end of the clip below too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlgeFRPz4Cw

It is not a constant barrage of fan songs and the like, because in what I would call "action sports" you would likely miss something if you were to try to coordinate something like that for the first time, so they never really get invented. There is some singing and chanting and stuff in baseball, and basketball and lacross, while fast-moving sports, actually have the sound system pumping music during the game. Hockey does it at pauses in play. I guess because we don't have any sports that have no stoppages I can't really say, MLS being the exception. I just don't know enough about that to comment, but I do know there is some mimicry that goes on, like raising scarves when we are a summer sport here and it gets so cold in winter that our summer temperature would likely make the hands quite sweaty just holding them. There might be songs, not sure.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Huh. At least for baseball fans, yelling that an opposing player (or, even more commonly, the umpire) sucks, either in general or pointing out something specific ("The ump is blind!" after a call someone doesn't like is almost a cliche by now), is pretty much expected from any halfway-devoted fan.

Though I suspect the thing that gets the fans banned isn't the "you suck", it's the "objectionable person". Any institution in the States that allows a large group of people of mixed age to watch or read the same thing is likely to get a powerful, excessive agency looking over their shoulder to make sure those poor, innocent children never see or hear any slightest hint of nudity, "abberant" sexuality (these institutions seem to be highly conservative in general) or profanity, even if hilariously mild for any of those. I don't know of any specific one for sporting events, but either there is one or there quickly would be one if the teams themselves aren't careful about preventing it themselves. Of course, most of the time the fan isn't really going to be heard by anyone important, so people do it anyway, but if attendance isn't that good that might be different, and the teams are going to ban it anyway simply to be careful.

[Low-Tech]

I think a lot of pro sports are getting tougher on fan misconduct at games because they realize that they have serious competition from broadcast mediums (TV, web, etc) and a lot of people are choosing to just stay home and watch the game that way. So to try and make the live game experience more enticing, they're doing their best to get rid of the stereotypical loud-mouthed drunken hooligan fan. ANd, since the best way to determine who's being disruptive and had a few-too-many to drink is usually to look for the guy who's cussing up a storm, a "no cussing" policy is the best way to get these guys to violate a rule and chuck em' out before they get really bad and do something stupid and injurious to the kid next to them.

I know a guy through my brother who works security at an MLB ballpark and they encourage fans to text them or call them via cellphone and just give their area in the stadium they're seated in if someone around them is being disruptive, and he and some other ushers will discreetly go to that location and hang out until they identify the troublemaker and wait for him to violate some rule and then toss him. Makes the fan experience much better and defuses situations that in the old days, when there was no easy way to contact stadium security, would become fistfights and bottle-tossing before it became apparent someone had to go.

Banning alcohol at games altogether would be even better, but, since nobody wants to give up that lucrative beer concession, it's a pipe dream on my part.

[Dusk]

Here's a thing that happened:
http://youtu.be/sGlXdgT6ukY

[ntw3001]

The comments are so Australian.

here you are talking like a proper drongo from the western suburbs.

[James]

The shorts are so short.

[Low-Tech]

Who wears short shorts?

[jvcc]

The comments are so Australian.

here you are talking like a proper drongo from the western suburbs.

I can viddy that these bezoomny droogies like to govoreet an awful lot of choodessny.

[ntw3001]

What a bunch of hogglers. What those jeebers need is a right hard chonk in the chawallamaroos. They'll be praddling for weeks.

[chrismachine]

I like all of that.

[EvilJekyll]

G'day Bruces and Shielas.

[Low-Tech]

Well, I don't want to speak for Judas, but, I'm sure he's just as happy as I that both our respective teams are putting some distance between themselves and the rest of the NL Central.

Pirates swept the Fish of Miami today, 5th straight win, 4th season series sweep, 14 games over .500 (a feat not seen by this team since 1991)

[MysticalDescent]

Uncool: Losing first test against South Africa.

Cool:

[chrismachine]

Wow, that's a great shot for someone to have captured!

[Low-Tech]

It's much cooler if you imagine the "bionic" sound effect from The Six Million Dollar Man playing over it

[James]

Fox shows cricket?

[Low-Tech]

It was probably taken from the "crazy plays of the week" segment of one of their sports shows, that's about the only way that cricket or non-World Cup soccer gets on FOX.

[ntw3001]

That was a pretty excellent opening ceremony! I especially liked Team GB's chav outfits.

[EsBe]

That was a pretty excellent opening ceremony! I especially liked Team GB's chav outfits.

'Twas an unsettling convergence of tophats. So many tophats.

[Judas Maccabeus]

Tophats and drums. The only way it could have been better is if there were tophat-shaped drums.

[MysticalDescent]

I actually really liked the Opening Ceremony. I've seen more than enough reviews naming Isambard Kingdom Brunel as 'a Dickens character' or 'Abraham Lincoln' for a lifetime, though.

[Low-Tech]

And the Pirates join the Reds, Nationals and Yankees in the 60 win club for this season!

If we can just keep this pace up for another month, that 19 year long streak of losing seasons, longest in pro North American sports right now, will itself be history.

Still a bit upset they traded fan-liked corner infielder Casey McGehee away, even if we got another relief pitcher out of the deal at the trading deadline. The "Casey at the Bat" wisecracks from the play-by-play announcers will be missed Fortunately, Alex Presley is still on the roster, so we won't be missing "Presley has left the building" whenever he homers

We also traded some backups, cash, and future draft picks for a couple extra infielders, Chris Snider and Gabby Sanchez. Defensively we're pretty solid, but SS Clint Barmes is looking like he's going to have a .200 season at the plate at this point, and with 3B Pedro Alvarez's tendency to go cold and strikeout a lot without warning..... well, we need an extra bat if we're serious about hanging around this season. And Andrew McCutcheon continues to put up numbers we haven't seen out of a Pirate since Barry Bonds in the early 1990's

It's still an odd sight, seeing no empty seats at the ballpark these days.

[ntw3001]

Team GB went out of the football tournament in the quarter-final on penalties. It's like a national pride thing now; I'd be a little disappointed if it had gone any other way.

Also congarburations to the Canadian women's team for putting us out of that quarter-final, unfortunately not on penalties (chicks don't got no respect for tradition). I didn't see the match, but I gather you were much better. Which is good, because I gather our women's team are a shade better than the men.

[IanC]

Andy Murray won gold in tennis though, yay!