The Pecan Park Eagle

Cub fans bring their lamentation over 1908 to Minute Maid Park in Houston, Is that act, in itself, obnoxious – or is it the falling-down, drunken, discourteous way they try to make their case the total behavior that seals our negative opinion of them?

Friend and Astro usher Bill Hale says the Chicago Cubs fans are the most obnoxious fans that visit Minute Maid Park and he should know, better than most. Dealing with fans, after all, is what ushers are hired to do. Bill says more Cub fans are asked to leave the ballpark than any other.

Up til next season, we’ve mainly been dealing with fans of other National League cities, although we’ve just gotten a preview this past weekend that Texas Ranger fans may be on our list of undesirable home game companions in the future. I personally don’t have any problem with true fans of other cities coming here, wearing their own club’s gear, and cheering like crazy for the visitors. It’s our fault if we cannot answer in kind as Astro fans.

My problem is with the “bandwagon Houston area residents” who line up with the Rangers, or any other team, just because they are winning, and then come to our ballpark dressed as the visitors to cheer against their own home team.

Transplants from Dallas, Chicago, Boston, and Atlanta, for example, are forgiven their support for “the other.” The “pick-a-winner” Houston area people are not. Not in my book, Of course, I may be speaking through the voice of a dead or dying culture that says that loyalty seeds and grows from your earliest experiences. Maybe today loyalty is simply another thing we place as a choice, like picking Apple over PC, or Sprint over AT&T, or Canon over Sony.

After years of watching the Cubs, Braves, and Cardinals bring their fans either to Houston to see the games, or from Houston to see the games in the other team’s gear, we are about to start finding out what awaits us in the American League that may be comparable – or worse. So far, the Red Sox look to be worse than anything we’ve ever seen from any NL club team and its fans. That bunch that came here for a weekend series in 2011 even brought their own songs, Minute Maid Park was turned into “Fenway Park Southwest.”

We’ll see soon enough. 2013 will be here before you know it.

Minute Maid Park, May 19, 2012. – All I care to say is: I hope these two fans didn’t grow up in Spring Branch or Meyerland.