Keith Strudler: Trump Goes To The Ballpark

In 1974, the Cleveland Indians held a game promotion called 10 cent beer night, which was, basically exactly what it sounds like. To help fill the stands, Cleveland sold beer at 10 cents a pop, and you could buy up to six at a time. Regardless of inflation, that’s still really cheap, especially in the context of today’s $15 artisanal stadium cocktails. At this game, some 25,000 fans showed up to largely drink themselves into oblivion and become increasingly destructive as the game went on. Some of the early transgressions included fans cheering for players to get hit and throwing empty bottles on the field. The game ended prematurely when fans stormed the field with an assortment of real and homemade weapons and started to brawl with both the visiting and home teams.

So, for anyone who thinks that Sunday night’s fan behavior at the World Series even approached the worst we’ve seen at a professional ballpark, you’re not even close. Now for those who haven’t seen it, President Trump attended Game 5 of the Series in Washington DC, which is not at all unusual for a sitting president to do. In fact, it’s more surprising how few sporting and public events Trump attends, especially compared to Obama, Bush, and Clinton, who was nearly a regular at Arkansas basketball games. But when Trump was publicly announced during the game, the crowd began to boo in unison. Then it got worse. Playing off Trump’s campaign rallies, fans started to yell “Lock him up,” an obvious reference to the impeachment process. That lasted for just a bit, then the game continued as the Nationals proceeded to prove that neither team has any intention of winning at home.

Trump hasn’t really talked about the spectacle. Honestly, I’m sure he’d deny it even happened. But some of his staff and loyalists, and even some of his critics have criticized how DC fans behaved. They’ve demanded respect for the office, if not the President himself. They’ve also said yelling for the imprisonment of a sitting president is uncivil if not downright third world, although it would be impossible to not see the irony in that argument. People on the other side have said booing a president and the freedom it entails is uniquely American. Vanity Fair called it a great American moment. And some said he brought this on himself, which can be said about pretty much his entire presidency, I suppose.

To be fair, I’d guess Trump may have gotten a different reaction in, say, Arizona, than he did in the Democratic and political town of DC. So maybe he should have waited until the Series returned to Houston before showing up. I’d imagine Trump was expecting something of a hero’s welcome after the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, more like George W. Bush after 9-11 or Obama after Osama bin Laden. While far from scientific, it’s pretty clear that this military operation didn’t move the needle much. Not that anything seems to now-a-days.

For the record, I’m not particular to either side of the DC narrative – that this was some crime against humanity or that it was a great moment for the American spirit. I think buying into either gives a bit too much credence to dogma on either side. It also probably assumes too much cerebral engagement by fans in that particular moment, one generally fueled by crowd dynamics, hot dogs, and alcohol. So let’s not pretend this is more than it is.

And perhaps that’s the point. American sports stadiums and arenas are one of the few communal spaces where a certain form of incivility is not simply allowed, but often encouraged. It’s a space where you can verbally assault another human being – usually an athlete, but sometimes another fan, or perhaps even a sitting president – in way you’d rarely do any place other than Twitter. That mindset has been the genesis of countless abhorrent fan outbursts, ranging from racist chants at soccer matches to mocking an athlete’s sexual orientation at basketball games. It’s taken years of policing and education – shall we say carrot and stick – to move fans in the right direction. But anyone who’s ever taken their kid to NFL game has become keenly aware of the lack of human decorum at your average stadium. And that’s without the spark of a remarkably polarizing president in a stadium of tense fans watching a 2-0 series lead sink into the ether.

So it’s not really worth arguing whether Nationals’ fans crossed the line Sunday night. Because in a stadium, that line hardly exists, about Trump or otherwise. For the record, the cheapest beer at Nationals stadium costs almost 10 bucks. That’s a far cry from 10 cents. Which means it could have gotten a whole lot worse.

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