Toss another beer bottle on the stinking pile of sports fans behaving badly.
Root, root, rooting for the home team no longer cuts it in America.
Kill the ump. Sportsmanship is dead. And civility isn’t feeling so good itself.
As hooligans hurled garbage, sending the Rockies running for cover and turning a beautiful ballpark in San Francisco as ugly as that infamous hate-you glare of Giants slugger Barry Bonds, the thought hit me like a beer bottle square to my thick noggin.
Stadiums across the country have become cesspools of four-
letter words, angry drunks and spectators who think that buying a ticket is a free pass to insult anyone and everything within earshot.
It makes me sick. Not mad. Sad.
On Friday night, in a gorgeous city where the local baseball hero is considered a national disgrace, Bonds got himself ejected in the ninth inning of a 5-2 game against Colorado by arguing a strike call with umpire Ron Kulpa.
What happened next was as predictable in the 21st century as road rage, cheating on taxes and a loudmouth who is positive the whole world revolves around his belly button.
As Bonds stormed back to the Giants dugout, sat down, crossed his arms and sulked, the stadium erupted with anger, spewing a downpour of trash that caused play to be halted for more than 10 minutes.
So what’s the big deal?
Asked by reporters in the San Francisco clubhouse about the small riot staged on his behalf, Bonds said, “I don’t care about that.”
The big deal is how little America cares its athletic arenas have become a nude beach where grotesquely immodest fans show off way more ugly personality than most of us want to see. Or hear.
When, exactly, did sports become an unscripted version of “Punk’d”?
During the World Cup, pranksters in Berlin were inspired to scatter soccer balls around the city, with each ball painted with this challenge to unsuspecting futbol tourists: “Can you kick it?”
The balls were filled with cement.
So sports anarchy can certainly be funny, in the grand tradition of the Three Stooges playing golf.
But billionaire Mavericks owner Mark Cuban recently set the gold standard for uncouth, unsportsmanlike fan behavior when he turned the NBA Finals into a cheesy whine festival, constantly moaning about the referees, convincing the city of Dallas its basketball team was the victim of the greatest conspiracy since the Kennedy assassination.
Oh, grow up.
And, in the NHL, a sure sign of spring is Americans booing the Canadian national anthem.
Definitely not cool.
In youth sports, too many parents show up with one hand tightly wrapped around that blasted cellphone and the other balling slowly into a fist, itching for a fight. And we wonder how these crazy kids today learn to be so rude and crude.
Hey, sports can drive us all a little wacko. I was raised in a household full of boys afflicted with the incurable disease known as Notre Dame football. Behind closed doors, we screamed like maniacs at the TV.
In public, while munching peanuts at stadiums across America, my father taught us it was fine to display an enthusiastic appetite for the game, but not to be obnoxious, profane or dangerous. Just like restaurant manners, only applied to sports.
Buy a $200 seat to a Broncos game, however, and you will soon learn that civility is now regarded as a sign of weakness in the stands.
A father who takes a young child to a football game is likely to come home with a kid who has learned more about expletives and obscene gestures than X’s and O’s.
Take a good look at Bonds spitting spite in the face of an umpire at home plate.
That angry man is us.
A little booing never hurt anyone.
Chucking a beer bottle, however, is not sign of support for the home team. It’s using a game as an excuse for behavior that would shame a Cro-Magnon.
The sports fan is working overtime to be ranked No. 1 among ugly Americans.
Staff writer Mark Kiszla can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
