The near last place Los Angeles Angels lost against the last place Chicago White Sox, and I’m feeling belligerent.
I got home and told my security alarm system to shut the fuck up and suck my balls. I said it with passion.
I guess it happens. And I’ll blame Josh Hamilton.
Imagine the gall of accepting a $25 million a year and then use allergies as an excuse on why he’s not seeing the ball well. Instead of paying virtually nothing, his salary jacked up Angels tickets to $5 including service fees.
And all I get is to sneak close enough to field level on the right side of Hamilton.
We screamed Football Town, annoying the hell out of a bunch of fans. This one dude wearing a fedora at least agreed, and he had our backs.
I hate getting smarmy with the Angels. My best buddies grew up loving this team. One of them, Justin, is getting married to his high school sweet heart. I’ve got to be in Buttfuck Fallbrook to see one of my best friends, a lifelong Angels fan get hitched. He at least made me respect the team, and I had him in mind.
Yes, I came to Angels Stadium to watch lefty Chris Sale do something great. The only real boo I gave out was when he was yanked in the last at bat of the inning. Manager Robin Ventura wasn’t going to leave him out there with Mike Trout, the only hitter aside from Howie Kendrick to have really gotten to him, was coming up to bat. The win-starved ChiSox needed this one bad, and sent in Jesse Crain to finish Trout off. Which he did. With a 0.93 ERA in middle relief for a losing team, you’ve got to wonder why the Angels didn’t take a flier on that.
Oh yeah.
Football Town.
Because Albert Pujols wasn’t enough, no.
About the only thing Hamilton and his guess hitting shenanigans adds to Arte’s Fan Experience is that I get to have fun while being angry. As a matter of pride, I only heckle a certain amount of players from visiting teams. Out of respect for the home team, I walk in with my Mariners cap and say nothing, nothing at all.
Except when it came to Vernon Wells, but everybody hated him so we were all cool.
Until it came to Hamilton.
A couple of knucklehead “true” Angels fan just sullied Justin’s good name by being ignorant. They heckled back at my buddy Eric, going for personal attacks, calling him a bandwagon fan.
He’s not an Angels fan per se, but his man crush Pujols is playing for it, and it’s the home team so he knows all the useless trivia, which he shot right at the condescending assholes who called us assholes for being the assholes who heckle a slumping homer.
Jesus Christ Hamilton, get it together. Dayan Viciedo is doing better than you, and he grew up without shoes. He paddled to America bitch. Get it together.
“Who’s the only Angel to lead the league in batting average?*”
Fuckers didn’t even get as far as saying Rod Carew, the standard wrong guess for something you either know or you don’t.
*In 1970 LF Alex Jones, 27, led the American League with a .329 BA. He was good all around, hitting 14 home runs, stealing 17 bases, driving in 86 runs, and finished with a 132 adjusted OPS, for a career high four wins. About the only thing he had in common with Carew was that he was black. And that he’d occasionally hit more than just a useless single.
And then they fire back with, oh yeah who’s the only Angel who won the Cy Young, without bothering to guess on an answer they didn’t know.
We both turned around and shot Bartolo Colon back at them, and they weren’t hearing it. Oh what about Nolan Ryan, man Nolan Ryan. Because he totally won one* in his 27 big league seasons.
*No, he didn’t. Nolan Ryan never won a Cy Young award. Ever. And you know what, I think he sleeps good at night.
One of them threatened to knock the Angels hat off Eric’s hat, but with fedora guy a three on four fight was fair enough.
And you kind of expect this with White Sox games. Several fights broke out in separate sections. I’m not sure our melee was the first intra-team fan brawl. They just kicked out a couple of fans wearing red, and a sea of red in their section cheered security for hauling their kind away.
Must be the watered down beer they tend to oversell there.
Or the Black/White and Yeti-suit clad White Sox fans basking in Sale’s 12 magnificent strikeouts, two of which came at the expense of, you guessed it,
Football Town.
In the end the hate turned into baseball talk, and the tone went from fighting words to optimism.
That maybe Hamilton will pick it up, and start guessing (or hearing the Holy Spirit’s voice telling him to swing) right. For the love of God, Josh, we don’t want this enterprise to sink lower than the Astros.
Through all that, Angels games remain fun, if for the fact that I’m watching live baseball. I got to see the closest thing in mechanics, height and throwing arm as I’ve gotten to Randy Johnson.
While I wish it were C.J. Wilson, because I’m really cheering for the guy as I mock his failures. We came from the same JuCos, he’s an Angel who took less money to go home, and I just traded for him in my fantasy team.
He wasn’t bad at all. Alex Rios was just better. And he labored, as he always does.
Too bad Hamilton couldn’t help out with a hit.
Fucking Football Town.