A Quick Word on the Fanvasion of Nationals Park

Phillies fans filled up Nationals Park again last night, and boy was Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post was not happy about it.

"“…I even exchanged my first rude words with a Philly fan in my life, if I’m not mistaken. I went to visit my dear friend Rick Maese in right field, right in the pit of baby-blue-hued PH-t-shirt-gimmicky nonsense, and I had to walk past six Phillies fans to get to Rick’s seats. When I left a few minutes later, one of the fans rolled her eyes at me. ‘Ahhhh, if you don’t like it, go back to Philly,’ were my words, more or less . How I wish she had thrown her beer on me.”–Dan Steinberg"

You heard the man.  She rolled her eyes at him.

Her eyes.

How he had the nerve to type out the incident for the rest of us to read, his hands shaking and his body shellshocked from the traumatic exchange, is beyond me.

I’m so sorry that nothing terrible or at least headline-worthy happened during this Phillies-Nationals series yet, Dan, but please don’t try to squeeze a personalized Pukemon out of the situation if there hasn’t been one.  This shit is bad enough when it happens; why try to provoke a story that isn’t there?

I mean, come on, man:  “How I wish she had thrown her beer on me”?  That sentence just sort of hangs out on the end there, proving my point.  Why would you wish that?  So you’d get to write a blog post that utilizes all those scathing adjectives you looked up in a thesaurus prior to the game for the sole purpose of describing Phillies fans?  The woman rolled her eyes, you responded verbally, then walked away silently wishing she’d further the “conflict.”

THE HORROR.

I know there’s a certain primal rush that comes with popping one’s “rude words” cherry, and maybe had the situation escalated, Dan would have found himself overtaken with bubbling bloodlust at the gall of these people rolling their eyes and shit.  It’s probably easy to get flustered.

But then we have this tale, of Thomas Boswell claiming that if he and his old D.C. buddies were young again, they’d go into these Phils-Nats contests and crack some Philly skulls.  That’s great and everything, but are you saying that what these games need is a violent brawl to set things right?  Isn’t that… exactly what people complain about when they talk about us?

“Gaaaah, these Phillies fans!  They come in here with their chants and their hats and their signs and their drunkenness and their fighting!  You know how we should stop them?!  With punching!!”

It just seems counterproductive to say you hate a fanbase’s stereotype and then emulate that stereotype to get hypothetical revenge on them.  I’m not asking anybody to come around to Phillies fans.  I’m not asking people to like it if their stadium is always full of other teams’ fans.  But its clear that Steinberg wanted so desperately to be assaulted so that he could sprint to his keyboard and tell everybody exactly what they already think:  Phillies fans are a bunch of meanies.

So… I hope you have better luck tonight getting a beer thrown on you?  I guess?