You Spoiled Little LA Girls

I attended the Wednesday night game between the Giants and Dodgers with some friends. I thought it would be a nice night out at the ballpark; a time to catch up and just enjoy the game. However, it turned into so much more. I've turned this entry into a running diary of what happened Wednesday night and I invite you to revisit the evening with me. I won't spoil what happens for you, but it involves heckling, a fight, and a girl getting hit in the face. Read on...

Arriving at the park
I pick up Michelle from her office at Pier 9 around 5:40 and we start driving down the Embarcadero to AT&T Park. Michelle is very stressed from work and is lobbing insults and complaining; fairly typical. We finally get to the parking lot around 6:15; yes, that's right -- 30 minutes plus to get down the Embarcadero. Pretty good time, if you ask me. Anyway, we're meeting Curtis, Rachel, Ester, and Steve at the game, but since we're still 45 minutes early, Michelle and I decide to head in ahead of time. We walk around the park once then head up to our seats and quickly realize it's going to be a very, very cold night.

Pregame
It's apparently Carnaval night at tonight's game, so there's some Carnaval drum/dance group performing outside the park, then on the field before the game, then randomly around the ballpark during the game. Michelle gets annoyed with them quickly. I sort of feel the same way; it's pretty much the same drum beat nonstop for about five minutes straight.

Tonight's pitching matchup features your defending NL Cy Young Winner, Tim Lincecum against Eric Stults, who is famous for pretty much nothing. The starting lineups are announced; Manny Ramirez gets a nice round of boos from the crowd. Michelle starts complaining that there are no cute guys on either team. Then Emmanuel Burriss is announced and his face is shown on the big screen.



Emmanuel Burriss is now her favorite player.

First Inning
Lincecum sits the Dodgers down in order...in five pitches. In the bottom half of the inning, the Giants get a rally going and Bengie Molina triples to deep center and drives in two runs.

2-0 Giants

Second Inning
Lincecum sits the Dodgers down in order again. The Giants score a run in the bottom half.

3-0 Giants.

Third Inning
Lincecum sits them down in order yet again. Giants tack on two more. I'm silently thanking God for letting me come to a game where the Giants are capable of scoring. Curtis, Rachel, and Ester arrive with blankets. Those will prove to be crucial tonight. Steve arrives a few minutes later. He starts talking about a no-hitter for Lincecum.

5-0 Giants.

Fourth Inning
Orlando Hudson singles for the Dodgers. There goes the no-hitter.

Sixth Inning
The score remains 5-0 Giants until Edgar Renteria doubles home Fred Lewis.

6-0 Giants.

Seventh Inning
I leave at the end of the sixth to go to the bathroom. I return to find four Dodgers fans sitting in the row in front of us. They're all white girls, probably around 18-19 years old. They also have probably the worst face art I've ever seen. They've written the LA logo on their faces, but it was probably done with a ball point pen. It looks more like something your friends do to you when you fall asleep than something that was done intentionally to look cool.

The girls are talking a little trash, but are quickly reminded that the score is 6-0. They still continue to talk.

After the seventh inning stretch, the girls are starting to heat up a little bit more. But what they fail to understand is that they're sitting in a section that's about 95 percent Giants fans. Everytime they stand up and turn around to say something, they're quickly heckled and drowned out.

Bengie Molina shows his approval by hitting a home run.

7-0 Giants.

Eighth Inning
Around now is when hell starts to break loose. The girls are clearly getting agitated by the heckling that's coming down on them (the constant middle fingers in our direction were an indication of this). Our group has certainly done our fair share to get under their skin. Mind you, they were asking for it. It's not like we picked some random fans to start heckling. There were other Dodger fans around us, but they were just watching the game and staying out of trouble. These girls sat in our section (where they didn't have seats) and began to start talking trash...as their team was getting killed.

Anyway, the Dodger girls start getting into it with our girls. The entire section falls totally quiet, listening and watching. A girl asks Michelle why she's wearing heels to a game, to which Michelle replies (I've slightly edited her response; you can fill in the real word yourself), "I have a job and just came from work, [young lady]. Where'd you come from, the zoo???"

Remember those scenes in 8 Mile when they're doing the freestyle rapping, and whenever one person comes up with a huge diss, the entire crowd goes OHHHHHH. Yeah, that was more or less what was happening in our section; except all the dissing was going in one direction. Actually, remember that scene at the end of 8 Mile when Eminem comes up with the huge diss on the other guy, and the dude can't say anything back and chokes on stage? Yeah, it was more like that.


At this point, the Dodger girls should probably have just left. Would we have jeered them out of their seats? Of course. But it's clear they weren't getting anything accomplished by staying in this section other than getting yelled at and insulted more. Also, I've completely lost track of what's going on in the game and have instead focused my attention on making life hell for these four girls, as have the majority of the Giants fans in our section. Childish? Perhaps. Necessary? Absolutely.

The same Dodger girl who was yelling at Michelle starts going around to other Dodgers fans in the section asking them to come sit with them to try and give them some form of protection. Her requests are denied. Finally, four guys in Dodger caps agree to sit in the row in front of them. The girls cheer and throw up high fives for them...and are left hanging. It's painfully obvious that the guys don't want to sit there. They just feel really bad for those girls. Also, they're not really giving the protection or support these girls want. They pretty much just sit down and watch the game, ignoring everything else that's going on.

Now is when things start to take a turn for the worse. Some Giants fans are throwing peanut shells at the girls now. Again, probably juvenile, but I find it funny nonetheless. One of the Dodger girls then picks up a half full cup of beer and throws it down into the aisle way at the front of the section, nearly hitting an usher. All the Giants fans point at her, yelling for security to take her away. They decide against doing so. A Giants fan sitting next to the girl that threw the cup then calmly tells her not to take the insults personally, and that she shouldn't be throwing things like that. The girl proceeds to get in his face and yell at him. The Giants fan, after remaining calm and collected before, has had enough of this girl's crap and proceeds to THROW HIS BEER IN HER FACE. I've seen this in movies tons of times but let me tell you, it is absolutely something you have to see in person.

My immediate reaction? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The girl then starts wildly swinging her arms at him, but he doesn't hit her back. He sort of takes her "beating" until one of his friends steps in and breaks them up. Security comes into the section and removes the four girls as well as the hero who sacrificed his beer. Now is when the heavy insults start flying at these girls. I don't remember quite what I yelled at them, but it was probably loosely translated as, "Please leave this section immediately, young ladies. I hope you enjoyed your visit to AT&T Park."

Chants of BEAT LA are raining down now and other people are getting right up in their faces as they're leaving and yelling stuff at them. It's starting to get a bit extreme. Giants fans all around me are throwing up high-fives and whooping it up. The girls continue to yell back and throw up middle fingers, perhaps hoping that will stop everything. I'm pretty hoarse at this point, but have managed to get people around me to sing "Nah-nah-nah-nah Nah-nah-nah-nah HEY HEY HEY GOODBYEEEE!!!" One girl responds by yelling racist comments. Stay classy, ladies.

Eventually, the girls are escorted out and things finally calm back down. I'm no longer cold from the weather but heated from all the excitement. Steve and Curtis perform a re-enactment of the beer throw to rave reviews from our section. Oh yeah, as all this has been going down, the Dodgers scored three runs. After the top of the eighth, the score is 7-3 Giants.

The bottom of the eighth rolls around and one of the Giants fans sitting behind us informs us that one of the Dodger girls is bleeding from her face. Apparently, as she was being led out, someone came from behind her and punched her in the side of the head. Even worse, it appears that it was a guy that did it (not the guy who threw the beer at her). I can see that the girls are still talking with security, but can't see the one who got hit. One of them is crying. I feel a little bad for her...but also, not too bad either. We'll get into this in a minute.

By the way, the Giants score two more runs.

9-3 Giants.

Ninth Inning
Dodgers add one more run before Brian Wilson closes the door on them.

Final score: Giants 9, Dodgers 4. Timmy gets his second win of the season, going seven strong and striking out eight.

Post Game Analysis
Let's start by saying what happened to that one Dodger girl is terrible. You shouldn't come to a baseball game expecting to leave looking like you just went to Fight Club. Also, if it's true that it was a guy that did it, that's even worse. Look, I don't care if that girl insulted your mama. You don't hit women, and ESPECIALLY not with a sucker punch.

Okay, now all that being said, these girls had a lot of this coming and brought it upon themselves. Anytime you come into an opposing team's ballpark, you know that you're going to be in hostile territory. As a result, you need to behave accordingly. If you start dissing the other team, you're going to get dissed back and by a much larger number of people. Also, remember that many of these people have been consuming fair amounts of alcohol, thus affecting the things coming out of their mouths. If you can take it, that's fine. If you can't, then you shouldn't even go there in the first place.

Also, it's important to remember the situation. These girls sat down in our section when the Giants were leading 6-0. There's a time to stand and shout, and there's a time to just sit down and shut up. For these girls, it was the latter. But instead, they instigated the Giants fans around them, trying to talk trash when they were getting destroyed. I'm trying to think of a clever analogy for this, but I can only come up with this: it's like if your team was down six runs, you were in the opposing team's ballpark, and you started talking trash about how much the other team sucked. You better be ready for an ass-whooping.

Now, recognize that the Giants fans in this situation are invincible. Not only do we outnumber these four girls, but we're also killing the Dodgers. It's also in the last few innings, so the game is just about over and the chance of the Dodgers coming back is pretty much non-existant. Again, you need to choose your battles. I've always said I'd never go into a fight I knew I couldn't win (I've never been in a fight so that probably says something about me too, but I can't decide what...). These girls need to heed that advice. This was not a fight they were going to win and they got knocked out in the eighth round (literally).

Anyway, in the end, this was arguably one of the most entertaining games I've ever been to. Look, there's a line of behavior that fans need to be aware of, and both sides crossed it at some point. But I've never been more proud to be a Giants fan.

Beat LA.