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approaching lsu athletics for the first time vis-a-vis the baseball team was a smart move.

our own lsu “geaux” tigers took on the harvard crimson last night at the new alex box stadium, conveniently located down the street from the old alex box stadium.  you can still park at the old alex box stadium and then just walk down to the new alex box stadium.  shit works out like that sometimes …

the contest lacked the passionate tailgating fan fervor that (i can only assume having never experienced it first hand) accompanies a home football game …

not to say that there isn’t a certain south east louisiana peculiarity bouncing around the ballpark in other ways …

for starters, we printed our tix off the internet. the first person we tried to give them to (some undergrad sitting behind a purple and gold folding table) reacted, well, strangely when i presented the tix. “Oh, those tickets … for those tickets you gotta go around the corner where they can scan those tickets.”

alright, you fucking prick.

things were weirder at the concession stand. chicago mel orders a strawberry frozen lemonade (interesting, because she doesn’t like strawberries or lemonade [¡wow!] yet she specifically wanted a strawberry frozen lemonade) and they bring her a cherry frozen lemonade. she asks to trade it in. the woman behind the counter, a middle aged, frumpy, agitated, career concession professional, turns to the undergrad who fucked it up and says, “that’s the second time you did that!” he gives a helpless kind of shrug, and she marches to the back, pushing him out of the way as if to say, “get the fuck out of my way you dumb motherfucker, i obviously have to do everything around here since you’re such a stupid piece of shit!” she starts rooting around in the cooler for a few seconds before turning and yelling, “no strawberry!” to which mel responds, “that’s fine, i’ll just take the cherry.”

i got one of those massive 90 ounce soft drinks in a plastic cup. it was a two hander, for sure. they give it to me with no lid. i’m walking around with this huge fucking drink looking for a lid. finally i head back up to the concession window and say, “hey, do you know where i can get a lid for this?” the girl says, “oh, we don’t have lids.”

alright …

we make it to the outfield bleachers (called the “home run” bleachers) and start shooting the shit.

how to heckle the harvard players:

"hey 38, what's the square root of 161?"

"hey 19, if a train leaves harvard yard traveling at 40 mph, and another leaves cambridge traveling at 42 mph ..."

"hey bullpen catcher, what's 4+4?"

we assumed they all had names like bryce billingham III, felix frankfurter, john quincy peddington adams, and so on (they did, too ...)

even though we knew that these young lads (every time chicago saw a picture of one of the players on the jumbo tron she says, "he looks just like a baby!") will one day become powerhouse pillars of society and will buy and sell us, our children, and our children's children for generations, we took comfort in the fact that, for tonight at least, the odds were high that they would get the living piss beaten out of them by the home team.

i predicted a 9-0 route. chicago had it at a more reasonable 8-2.

the crowd in the home run bleachers were not what you would call wine and cheese liberals. they were coon asses. white men, mostly. couple women, but mostly men and no non-whites at all.

when the game starts, i hear a guy behind me say "that's a big glove {something, something, something}" while i'm fucking with my camera. chicago leans in and says, "did you hear what that guy just said? i'll tell you later ..."

this is what she heard, and i have no reason to doubt her, but ... wow. supposedly it was, "that's a big glove on that nigger." now i cannot confirm or deny this, but chicago's got pretty good hearing (she can't see for shit) and, well, he was the only black kid on the lsu team. i didn't think the glove was that large, however.

the conversation in the home run bleachers did not improve. there was also a kid running around wearing a t-shirt with a picture of huge turkey standing in front of an american flag on it. the kid also had braces and was wearing a rawlings trapeeze infielder's glove. nice glove, but, jesus kid ...

we moved down the third base line after another weird exchange at the concession window. i walk up and ask this kid, "can i get a hot dog, a small popcorn, and a small nachos?" he starts to move, gets confused, then gets really flustered and says, "can you just repeat all that for me?" chicago thought his english wasn't too good, but i think he was just in over his head like everyone else who worked there.

things were much better in the non-home run bleacher section. we could put our feet up on the wall and were out of ear shot of red necks as we watched the tigers beat the holy hell out of those ivy league pussies. we stayed till the end.

final score: 10-2.

a great night for baseball.

Tags:   baseball · lsu6 Comments