I know it's not a popular opinion, but it's a GAME FOR CHILDREN

Thursday I traveled to Anaheim and attended game two of the ALDS featuring the Angels against the Red Sox. To my great shock, the Sox losing and falling behind 0-2 was the only second worst aspect of the evening. The first was the knowledge that my husband is going to have to wait a very long time to share his passion for live baseball games with whatever child we might eventually have.

You can’t take a kid to these games. I’d rather my small child happen upon the raunchiest issue of Maxim in existence than sit through three hours of the atmosphere of Thursday’s game. And that’s saying something, because I went to a women’s college.

I’m tagging along on this particular baseball outing with three die-hard Red Sox fans. But really, you wouldn’t know their devotion to the team by looking at them. One is wearing an understated Red Sox t-shirt. One is wearing normal street clothes and a Red Sox hat. Mike is the most ostentatious, but that just involves a Boston away jersey and a cap. I’m not wearing any team insignia, because I’m still sore that my team was out of contention back in August. No one is wearing a deliberately exacerbatory t-shirt, no one has their face painted. We’re there to respectfully (but still enthusiastically) watch our team play as visitors.

We pile out of our cars and the first Angels’ fan we see is wearing is a t-shirt proclaiming “BOSTON SUCKS.” Bracketing the fact that we’re reading this indictment of another city in ANAHEIM, is it really necessary to dump on an ENTIRE CITY (especially one with the significance Boston holds in the American cultural landscape) because of a BASEBALL RIVALRY?

A member of our party calls the woman wearing the shirt out, saying, “You guys are REALLY original.” The woman is gracious, laughs, and wishes us luck. That was the last positive encounter we had that evening.

I get it, I swear. The Angels and the Red Sox seem to meet all the time in the post-season, and up to this point, the Angels haven’t been able to do much against the Sox. It’s no fun being the underdog. I understand this. I root for the Houston Astros, for god’s sake. Add to that situation the fact that Boston fans are like locusts that devour ballparks everywhere, and resentment is understandable. In fact, it’s expected.

But we have left resentment far behind. Thursday, I thought we’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in the Gaza Strip. Sox vs. Angels has turned into a religious war featuring zealots clinging to territory for dear life.

I know that the “Yankees Suck!” cheer is as Boston as, well, Cheers. But it’s always made me a little uncomfortable. I know that sounds prudish, but I expect a little bit more from the great American pastime. We make our kids play Little League, knowing full well that for 99% of them, the ability to throw and catch a ball and run the bases is going to make no discernible difference in the course of their lives. Instead, we attach importance to Little League to teach them about being part of something, about playing well with others. They learn that being a sore winner or loser doesn’t change how the game turned out. In the microcosm of Little League, kids learn that life is full of wins and losses, and regardless, you keep playing.

I just don’t know how kids are supposed to absorb these things when they to watch adults fail to model that behavior at a game they’re not evening playing.

But like I said, in Anaheim, we’re way past chanting that the other team sucks.

Mike and I have to get up in the fourth inning. We observe an Angels fan wearing a “F*** Boston” (expletive censored by me, not him) t-shirt screaming at a Red Sox fan, “You can’t come to our house and root against our team!” [The Angels make the same percentage off tickets sold to Red Sox fans.] On the way back to our seats, a collection of Angels fans that were big enough to know that they’re intimidating point at Mike and start booing as we ascend the stairs. Once the Angels have a definitive lead, the overgrown frat boy I have the misfortune of sitting next to starts screaming “F*** Boston,” until he’s hoarse. Once he gets bored with idly shouting vulgarity into the stadium, he cups his hands around his mouth and starts yelling it in my ear. Then he starts yelling “Carpetbaggers go home!” I wasn’t expecting much out of this guy, but really?! Reconstruction after the bloodiest conflict on our nation’s soil?! Dude, IT’S A BASEBALL GAME! [And that reaction brackets the obvious historical inaccuracy—again, not expecting much out of this guy].

The Sox lose, and as we’re leaving, some fans (who also are big enough to know that they’re intimidating) hang over the walkway and scream at us, “Where ya going, Sox Fans?!”

I’m way past uncomfortable at this point. Tensions are high, and there are big, aggressive guys who are really drunk. I’m with three big guys who I know wouldn’t let anything happen to me, but I really don’t want it to come to that.

We walk down the many stories of ramps that lead down to the parking lot. The exiting crowd is in a frenzy, yelling, “BOSTON SUCKS!” at the top of their lungs. As this park is the very same one where, a few years ago, we sat in front of a dad, thrilled at the prospect of teaching his sons baseball, responded to a “Red Sox Suck!” chant by saying to his kids, “Don’t ever let me hear you say that. That attitude is what sucks,” I’m confused. I ask Mike, referencing the most intense baseball rivalry I know, “Are Yankees fans this bad?” “Not nearly,” he responds.

And then I see her. A little girl, about five, riding on her dad’s shoulders. Her parents look terrified and are obviously trying to get out of the park as fast as they safely can.

“You can’t take a kid to see a baseball game anymore,” I remark to Mike.

“No kidding,” he says. “There’s no way to explain to them that they can’t act like this at their Little League game.”

I know the multi-million dollar contracts and obscene ticket prices are confusing the issue a bit, but you know what? Baseball is a kid’s game. And as much as the sports enthusiast gene may have skipped me individually, I believe that the subculture has value in our nation. But you know what? My kids may wait a really long time to experience a really important milestone in that subculture—the first live game. It would be irresponsible parenting to expose a kid, that’s still modeling the behavior s/he experiences in the adult world, to this level of interpersonal violence. And that’s just sad.