LETTER: Fans should be respectful
On 4/27/11, a baseball game was held between the Club teams of Utah State University and the University of Utah at a field in Providence. The experience was marred for many of us by one Utah State University student.
Baseball is a grand American game, and fans go to cheer for their team and have a good time. Having a good time for one USU fan does not mean cheering for his team. Instead, to him it means taunting and demoralizing the other team. I don’ believe I ever heard him cheer for his team, but his mocking of the players on the U of U team was nearly constant.
I have been attending baseball games since my 21-year-old grandson, who is on the U of U team, was 5, rarely missing a game in all those years, and never, ever before has there been such a rude person in the stands at any game I have attended.
This Utah State student/fan arrived very shortly after the game began and his bullying began as soon as the U of U pitcher threw his first pitch after he arrived. “Come on number 9, is that the best you can do? I came to watch a ball game!” And then, “Number 9, you gotta stop pitching like that; you’re getting dirt all over your catcher!” And later, “Number 9, can’t you pitch any better than that; it must really suck to be you!”
When our pitcher was pitching and when he was batting, the jeering was nearly constant. And his jeering was not relegated to our pitcher alone; he ridiculed other of the U of U players also. Rude looks in his direction from U of U fans didn’t deter his vocalizations at all. I finally went to him and asked him to please stop and his reply to me was to ask me a question. “Have you ever been to a Utah State basketball game?” When I didn’t reply instantly, he went on: “Well, this is how we are. We jeer. We jeer loudly and constantly. This is what we do.” When I protested and told him he was ruining the experience for many of us and being unsportsmanlike and unfair, he replied that he and I just had a philosophical difference and that I would have to live with it.
He had two friends sitting beside him who laughed at everything he said and all that happened. That is not surprising. Bullies always have people with them who give them strength by their attendance.
What WAS sad and surprising to me, and to the other U of U fans, was that the adult Utah State fans in the stands (parents and grandparents of the players, I assume) seemed not to take offense at what he was doing, but, instead, laughed and chuckled at his intimidating, very loud comments. In fact, one other U of U fan asked some Utah State fans sitting beside her if they would please ask him to be quiet (after her pleas to the bully had no effect), and their reply was “That’s the way Aggies are at games; live with it.”
To be fair, there were two or three female Utah State fans who DID ask him to pipe down, but their request went nowhere with him.
I finally left where I was sitting and went to the other side of the dugout so I could enjoy the game without being subjected to his vocalizations. After some time I went back to the other side of the dugout and found him and his fellow conspirators gone. It seems someone from the announcers’ booth had told them to leave.
Is this true, Aggies? Is this the way fans from Logan enjoy sporting events and that you find nothing wrong with this behavior? If so, I think some soul-searching needs to be done by the athletic department and the administration at Utah State. I was once an Aggie, and that’s not the way we cheered at games while I was there.
Peggy Bon