fans vs. Fans

With no disrespect to our fine blog's educated and not immature target audience, I'm willing to bet few of our readers even know where the hell the Faroe Islands even are. Hell, if I didn't follow soccer like some people follow religion, neither would I. As the map illustrates, the Faroes are essentially just a cluster of rocks sticking out of the Atlantic Ocean in the middle of nowhere between Iceland, Norway, and Scotland. The national dish is whale blubber, and the entire population of the Islands could fit in Soldier Field with about 12,000 seats to spare. (Angry Faroese, you can send your hate e-mail to yellowchairsports@gmail.com, but that won't make any of it less true).

When English club Manchester City was drawn against a club from the Faroes for a home-and-home series in the first round of the UEFA Cup, the prospect looked bleak for fans. Then again, Man City fans have spent most of their lives playing Clippers to Manchester United's Lakers, so I suppose it wasn't too big of a change.

Upon learning of the series, fans with a small f would have checked the airfare from Manchester to the Faroes, seen it was too expensive, and thought "Ah, we'll just watch the home leg then."

Fans with a capital F like these 12 Man City Fans drive 8 hours from Manchester to Aberdeen, Scotland. From there, they catch an overnight, 12-hour ferry boat to the Shetland Islands, off the Northern coast of Scotland. Once there, they rent out a fishing trawler ...IN MAN CITY COLORS, NO LESS and command it on the 26-hour sea voyage to Torshavn, in the Faroe Islands, site of today's UEFA Cup tie between Man City and EB/Streymour.

No word at press time on whether these people are employed.

Not only did the Fans manage to arrange all this, but they also arranged for soccer magazine FourFourTwo to pay for their booze . Now, I don't want to question these Fans' wisdom, but of all the places where I would want to have a boatload of free beer at my disposal, the high seas is closer to the bottom of that list than the top.

Looking at the picture, I also have to imagine that the boat may have been chosen for its relative inexpense rather than its seaworthiness. Just a thought. Hats off to 'em though.

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YCS Baseball Roadshow: Stop 6, Busch Stadium, St. Louis, MO

Well, the YCS staff's dream to one day, collectively visit and comment on all 30 Major League parks is one step closer to reality. Last night after a thoroughly entertaining (and drunken) SLU Law softball game in which my three-run homer (yes, a homer) was not enough to lift Motion to Strike over the Bad News Barristers, my buddy Matt and I decided to head down to kind-of brand spanking new Busch Stadium for the first game of a four-game set between the Cardinals and my Cubs.

With the Cards and Cubs being the hot ticket that it was, we were very fortunate to snag some tickets off the streets from the scalpers for very close to face ($30 for $26 seats), and the view was not too shabby (aside from the hole in the ground beyond left field where old Busch used to stand.)

First off, let me just say that any notion of Cardinals fans being the "best fans in baseball" who are just that much more knowledgeable and passionate for "getting behind the hometown team" is a load of bullshit. The stadium was half-empty in the top of the second inning. There was never really any significant noise from the home crowd, and this is a team that, admittedly while they're in a bit of a tailspin/free fall right now, is still playing meaningful baseball in mid-September, and had the division leaders and their archrivals in for the weekend.

The Cardinals fans in our section, however, were pretty cool to us. After some good-natured heckling, we ended up hanging out with a group of Cardinals fans from Belleville, IL, which is right across the river. When asked who they hated more, the Royals or the Cubs, the answer was simple and direct. "We hate you personally more." OK.

I laughed at the "McDonalds Big Mac" corner in left field where they give the fans giant french fries to wave to distract the opposing batter who's only 340+ feet away. Not to mention the fact that it's there to commemorate where Big Mac hit his 62nd Home Run...except it was in a different stadium. Oops.

Beer, as in any ballpark, is a ripoff, but here, it felt even worse. $8.25 for
Bud Light. That is extortion. Two beers cost me $16.50. The brewery is literally right down the street, so you can't build shipping costs into that. A-B rules St. Louis like the Russian mob, and they're ripping off the townsfolk for $8.25 in exchange for watered-down Clydesdale piss.

Some other strange observations about Busch...

If a tornado strikes St. Louis, and you are a woman at Busch Stadium, you are shit outta luck. Say hello to the flying monkeys for me.

The Olde Tyme charm of a hand-changed scoreboard is kind of lost when it's quoting stocks. I wonder if during day games when the markets are open they hand change it live. If so, my hats off to those guys.

The courthouse near Busch is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott
Decision. Is that something you'd really like to be proud of? "150 years ago on this spot, informed people of this state determined that people ARE in fact property."

The Cubs just about gave me a heart attack in the 9th inning by allowing two homers, then loading the bases before finally winning 5-3.

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Meanwhile, here in the states, we cut people off after the 3rd quarter

Germany fricken rules.

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Keeping the 'Brew' in Brewers

Common sense and cool (foamy) heads have finally prevailed, at least in Milwaukee. The Brewers have decided to continue to allow alcohol in the clubhouse.

Some people, Jay Mariotti being one of them, feel like this is the equivalent of pissing on Josh Hancock's grave. Brewers players, like Chris Capuano, see it in a different light:

"For the most part they treat us like adults. There's no curfew on the road. You're expected to handle yourself professionally. Guys are not going to sit in the clubhouse and drink four and five beers and then drive. We would never do anything like that. But it's nice if a guy wants to have a beer after a game that the team is OK with it."

Amen. These bans have been completely knee-jerk reactions to appease fans and whiny sports columnists that climb onto a soapbox to try to sound like a concerned fan with a good sense of morals. It's in the same realm as the propositions that the NBA should ban players from going to clubs. On the surface, you say "How can that be bad?" But this is a potentially slippery slope, because it is a matter of whether professional sports leagues treat their players like people, or property. When you start taking away basic rights because a small percentage of players make dumb decisions, you are coming dangerously close to treating your players like property.

Like Cappy said, allowing your players to have a beer after the game (or in the fourth inning if you're a middle reliever with Roy Oswalt on the mound) is treating them like adults, and I'm sure that the Brewers' biggest sponsor had nothing to do with the decision. Regardless, hopefully more teams can take a page from the Brewers notebook and continue to allow their players the freedom to down a few suds after a game.

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