Boo birds in full flight
Yankees’ Stanton hears the sound of his failing
It’s been nearly two decades since Rick Pitino set the standard for Sports People On High Horses lecturing fans on the impropriety of booing.
The date: March 1, 2000. The venue: The FleetCenter, as it was known back in the days of Loserville. (It having been some 14 years since any of our pro sports franchises had won a championship.)
The issue: The Celtics were booed as they made the nighttime commute from the parquet to the locker room after dropping a 96-94 decision to the Toronto Raptors on Vince Carter’s threepoint buzzer beater.
Pitino, perhaps not realizing the fans were as much booing
as any of his handpicked players, if not more so, famously caterwauled that “Larry Bird is not walking through that door, fans. Kevin McHale is not walking through that door, and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through the door, they’re going to be gray and old.”
Pitino then even more famously caterwauled that “... all this negativity that’s in this town sucks,” this town being Boston, and for good measure he aimed some retroactive tsk-tsking at those Red Sox fans who booed Carl Yastrzemski and Jim Rice back in the day.
Pitino’s lessons in fan etiquette merit a good dusting-off with the New York Yankees and their embattled new slugger, Giancarlo Stanton, in town to begin a threegame Fenway Park series against the happy, high-flyin’ Red Sox. Stanton, who played for the Miami Marlins when the Sunshine State fielded not one but two genuine big-league baseball teams, has struggled mightily with the Yankees, including an 0-for-7 effort with five strikeouts Sunday as the Bombers suffered a 12-inning, 8-7 loss to the Orioles in the Bronx.
Stanton also lined into a double play. And in the bottom of the 10th, chop-licking Orioles manager Buck Showalter ordered a free pass to Aaron Judge, choosing to pitch to Stanton with the winning run on second. Stanton came through — for the Orioles, anyway — by hitting into a force play to end the threat.
The game ended with Stanton striking out, naturally, and the new Bronx Bomber was given quite a Bronx cheer. And that’s not a good thing.
The Dickson Baseball Dictionary defines a Bronx cheer as a “contemptuous razzing sound made by sticking the tongue between the closed lips and expelling air; a razzberry. It has long been associated with New York baseball fans who have never been shy about criticizing players in disfavor.”
I’m not sure if there was any actual closing of lips and expelling of air going on at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, since that sort of thing has largely gone out of style. But let’s not quibble, Stanton was most definitely booed by Yankees fans — again. He also had a fivestrikeout game in his Yankee Stadium debut, an 11-4 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.
As always when underperforming athletes take a beating from the customers, Sports People On High Horses are quick to ride to the rescue. Pitino was not available to remind everyone that the Babe, Joltin’ Joe and the Mick are not walking through that door, but Michael Kay, the voice of the Yankees on the YES Network, reacted to Stanton’s fifth strikeout by saying, “And how about this crowd, that’s a little harsh, booing him with the five strikeouts in a game which the Yankees are leading 9-4.”
Chris “Mad Dog” Russo on Mad Dog Sports Radio said, “I can’t believe the Yankees fans booed Stanton after five strikeouts. I was shocked.” In Mad Dog’s accounting, the booing was done by “seven Yankees fans who are drunk, who are sitting there with a poncho and who want to go out there and boo.”
Kay and Mad Dog are experts on the New York sports experience. Kay, I happen to know, can recite the entire screenplay from “The Pride of the Yankees,” this from watching the classic Lou Gehrig biopic hundreds of times growing up the Bronx.
They should know, then, that booing is a tradition that dates back to the gladiators at the Roman Colosseum, except these days you don’t get thrown to the lions for blowing a save or, in Stanton’s case, striking out five times.
There was a time when the only means at a fan’s disposal to register a complaint was to buy a ticket and boo. The advent of sports talk radio changed that, and now there are a variety of social media platforms for fans who want to vent.
But booing is still the best messenger, because it’s organic and community-based. When you’re just one fan doing the screaming, you’re a crank, a leather lung. When you’re one among 36,000, you’re a referendum.
It’s been said there are 50 Eskimo words for “snow.” Too bad that’s not the case for “booing,” since it takes many forms. The booing Sox fans have delivered to various Yankee villains over the years — nobody ever got booed more lustily at Fenway than Reggie Jackson — is much different than the booing that rains on the hometown manager when he’s taking out a popular pitcher who has been dealing. There’s also rhymes-withboo booing — former Sox infielder Lou Merloni can expand on this for you — and there’s pregamestarting-lineup booing in which star players on the opposing team get a droning, ritualistic beatdown.
What Stanton has been getting is nothing more than the ballpark equivalent of an instant message: “We’ll be with you all summer, big fella, but you gotta get off the schneid.”
In the meantime, Giancarlo Stanton should get something of a respite tonight from Red Sox fans. What’s not to like about a Yankee who strikes out five times a game?