Texas Rangers fans once again showed their class.
Opening Day was Monday and instead of treating it with the dignity and respect it deserved as a wannabe national holiday, instead local baseball "fans" decided to use it as a reason to get trashed at 10:00 AM in the morning and defile a statue set up to commemorate a fan who had died in the park a few years ago.
The spectacle of a trashed statue to a dead firefighter and his boy should not be surprising. Look at the number of fans who pass by and do nothing and it is the same in that stadium at Globe Life Park where regardless of where you sit you hear the most inane comments from fans right in front of children.
I get that fans get excited, but I think it is the alcohol which is the problem. That AND a lax security staff, a staff that allowed former Rangers slugger Josh Hamilton's wife, Katie, to be the subject of multiple obscenities and commentary - from fans who likely had too much to drink.
A few years ago I attended a baseball coaching clinic put on by Cal Ripken, Jr. The session started with a note that ten million kids play some sort of organized youth baseball. After some polite applause, the crowd was reminded that the number while significant was down more than twenty-five percent from ten years earlier.
While I am not ready to say alcohol at sports stadiums is to blame for losses in youth sports, who wants to take their kids to a game where rowdy, alcoholics demean both the players and the venue? This was another Opening Day loss for Major League Baseball. I hope it fixes this problem soon.
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