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For sports fans, what’s appropriate conduct?
BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

Lately I’ve been thinking about sports. Big surprise, I know. But this time, instead of looking at sports from the perspective of a fan or a media person covering the event, I’ve been trying to look at sports from the perspective of the athlete. And if you are that athlete, what is your outlook on what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior among the assembled paying customers who are there to watch you?

A couple of Celtics-related stories of late have contributed to putting these thoughts into motion. Part one is the fan treatment that Nets point guard Jason Kidd received by the FleetCenter Faithful during the past two playoff series in Boston. Kidd, whose violent actions against his wife while he was a member of the Phoenix Suns earned him the brand of "wife-beater" by Celtics fans, has certainly taken the high road in regard to the venomous taunting he endured during the playoffs, yet nonetheless felt that his wife and child were in danger if they were to attend any more games in Boston. On a related note, Nets coach Byron Scott excoriated the behavior of Boston’s basketball fans, calling them "crazy" and implying that they were drunkards and racists, creating such a tempestuous atmosphere that he too dissuaded his wife from making the trip up for games three and four in the Hub.

The other relevant fan-behavior story emanating from this series concerned the confrontation between Celtics forward Antoine Walker and a heckling fan behind the players' bench, a flare-up that could have turned violent but ultimately resulted in the noisy fan not only being ejected from the FleetCenter, but losing his season-ticket privileges as well.

Both episodes suggest the bigger question: what "rights" do fans have when they buy a ticket to a sporting event?

In the arena of "sportsmanship," heckling can be good-natured or it can be considered mean-spirited. In Washington, DC, they still talk about legendary heckler Robin Ficker, who used to drive opposing NBA players crazy with his verbal taunts from behind the visitors' bench. His favorite targets — Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, Chris Webber — were often thrown off their games by Ficker’s non-stop PG-rated barrage, and the NBA eventually implemented a fan code of conduct — nicknamed the Ficker Rule — that allowed arena security to eject patrons who did not abide by the established policy.

Heckling has always been part of major spectator sports, but it certainly crosses the line when it becomes personal, involves profanity, or distracts other fans from watching the games. From all indications, Antoine Walker's taunter, Stewart Berg, had been on the seventh-year forward for years, and Walker finally snapped and went after him after the game-three blowout loss to the Nets.

Does the price of a season ticket, or any ticket for that matter, give the likes of Berg and Ficker the right to be vocally critical? Therein lies the elusive question. Pedro Martinez was smacked around by Baltimore in his first Fenway appearance last month, but his feelings were apparently most hurt not by his dismal performance on the mound, but by the taunts of a front-row patron that let Pedro have it on his way to the showers. Again, by all appearances, the fan was not being personal or using foul language; he was merely stating his opinion to a man who had just recently practically blackmailed the club for a $17.5-million contract option for 2004, and then had the nerve to complain that the club had failed to offer him an acceptable multi-year extension. What’s the harm in that, particularly if this fan paid upwards of a C-note to see Pedro give up 10 earned runs in four-plus innings, all while being paid a half-mil. Free speech and all that, after all.

Duke University students are widely believed to be the most clever fans in all of college basketball, as the "Cameron Crazies" routinely taunt and heckle opposing players for their off-court misbehavior, legal troubles, or poor study habits, but it is always perceived as "good fun," "fair game," and intellectually witty. No fandom makes it harder for the opposition to make free throws at their home court than the Duke faithful, and their vociferous tactics have been imitated and implemented by college hoop supporters throughout the country.

But is it sporting of them? Is it right to make fun of a player’s difficulties? Do they have that right?

Different sports have different rules of behavior that are to be adhered to by the sport’s fans. For instance, in baseball, football, basketball, and hockey, fans are expected, even encouraged, to yell for their team — and against the other team — throughout the game. After all, nobody shuts up just when a hockey goaltender is about to face a penalty shot, or a pitcher is about to throw a 3-2 pitch with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game, or a quarterback goes up to the line to call an audible. Yet in other sports, such as golf or tennis, fans can be ejected for making noise at inopportune times. Golf is a particularly ridiculous offender: one could make the case that, compared to attempting to hit a cut fastball from Roger Clemens, hitting a stationary golf ball at a distant target is a piece of cake. Yet when Manny Ramirez is in the batter’s box facing the Rocket, the crowd stands and screams, while assembled golf galleries are expected to maintain absolute silence when Tiger Woods lines up his eight-iron to the green at Augusta.

Same in tennis — why on earth do tennis players need to have absolute calm when they are serving a ball that they are tossing up themselves, when basketball players have to deal with Thunder Stix and bellowing crowds when they are lining up their foul shots? Yet you can and will be thrown out of a tennis arena for making too much noise, or ejected from the grounds of a golf tournament if you so much as take a picture during a PGA pro’s backswing.

Apparently, some sports need more "concentration" than others, and that may have a lot to do with the tradition and code of conduct of the game itself, but some of these restrictions on vocal fan behavior seem fairly outdated and antiquated. Sports are in many ways designed to provide an outlet for people to let out their emotions and root on their favorite players and teams, and those folks who visit the stadiums or watch or listen to the games on TV or radio at home are the ones who subsidize those outlandish salaries.

So what are the rights that fans have by virtue of the purchase of a ticket?

Well, again, as long as free-spirited heckling and criticism does not cross a certain line — and I would dictate that line exists at a spot where young fans would not be offended or distracted from the game being played — and that it is not a personal attack or unjust, then fans have the right to say what they want. If the barbs are injected with venom or profanity or interrupt other fans’ enjoyment of the game, then that kind of behavior should not be tolerated.

Booing is another right of the fan, and while thin-skinned New England athletes routinely complain about the dizzying rate at which fans turn on them, the fact is that Boston fans only rain down boos when they feel like their players are not giving their all. As I’ve said many times in this column, Boston sports fans want their athletes to care as much as they do, and too often in recent years — with the high-priced Red Sox in particular — the team’s faithful don’t feel like their team gives a damn as much as they do. Hence, boos. Boos are intended to show displeasure about performance (and sometimes off-field transgressions, as in the most deserving case of former Soxer Carl Everett), and to tell the offending athlete(s), "Shape up!"

And at Fenway, where fans pay the highest ticket prices in the majors, and at Gillette, where the Patriots sell out every single home game (with a season-ticket waiting list of nearly 50,000), and at the FleetCenter, where downtrodden Bruins fans continue to pay ridiculously high ticket and concession prices to see a second-rate product, no one can say that Boston athletes do not have strong emotional and financial backing.

Calling Jason Kidd a "wife-beater" is not a clever or innovative taunt, and Celtics fans who for the second straight year yelled at the Nets’ star player with that epithet could be accused of bad taste and poor sportsmanship. Additionally, that hateful language could forever turn off Kidd, or his teammates, or his other friends in the NBA, from ever wanting to play here, and who could blame them?

As to hecklers like Ficker and Berg — well, I don’t hear their non-stop drones throughout the games, nor do I know their exact language, but they too have an obligation to know the difference between criticism and mean-spiritedness, and to consider the feelings of the fans seated around them and the targeted player himself.

In return, the fans who buy the high-priced tickets — and by association pay the salaries of these pampered athletes — have the right to cheer and yell, heckle and taunt (within reason) the opposing players, and deserve an enjoyable experience at the arena/stadium.

In addition, they should have the right to see their favorite players talk to the media, rather than shut down all conversation and pout in a corner as the likes of Manny, Pedro, and Nomar have been known to do.

But that, as they say, is a story for another day.

Cheers!

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com, and Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com

 

Issue Date: May 16, 2003
"Sporting Eye" archives: 2003 |2002

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