Some fans take trash talk too far
By By Will Bardwell / sports writer
Feb. 19, 2004
I love trash talking. It's definitely one of my favorite parts of being a sports fan.
I grew up watching pro wrestling and was a huge Ric Flair fan. Flair was usually a bad guy, but it was hard to hate him because he was just so clever. It didn't matter whether he was going to get pounded or not. He always had something hilariously insulting to say about his usually dim-witted opponent. His antics were usually more entertaining than his actions.
I certainly got the attention of then-Padres outfielder John Mabry in 2000, and I heckled former Cardinals prodigy Rick Ankiel as he warmed up in the bullpen before a game against Pittsburgh in 2001. Incidentally, he threw something like five wild pitches and hasn't been seen on a Major League roster since.
And yes, I take full credit for that.
Sure, taunting is obnoxious. But most of the time, it's a lot of fun. And impartial observers, even if they don't join in, usually get a pretty good laugh out of it (unless you count the J.D. Drew groupie sitting three rows in front of me at Busch Stadium).
But it's easy to go too far. It happened last week in Guadalajara, Mexico, when Mexico's 23-and-under soccer team defeated the United States 4-0 for a spot in the Summer Olympics. As an American sports fan, it's saddening to suffer such a loss, but you can hardly blame the kids considering how the Mexico fans acted.
A stadium-wide chorus of boos drowned out the American national anthem as a precursor to the blowout. As if winning wasn't enough, as the American team left the field, several dozen fans around the field entrance chanted "Osama! Osama!"
Soccer fans are notoriously over-the-top, but such behavior isn't relegated to those abroad. It happens everywhere even here at home. While in Oxford for the first Mississippi State-Ole Miss meeting in January, an Ole Miss student behind press row kept ripping into the Bulldogs' star forward, Baylor transfer Lawrence Roberts.
Then, there are Philadelphia sports fans, who wrote the book on taking things too far. In October 1999, Dallas Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin caught a pass and landed on his head. The neck injury ended his career. He was lucky not to be paralyzed.
But Eagles fans booed the entire time he was down. The boos got louder when a stretcher came to take Irvin off the field, and reached their apex when then-Cowboys cornerback Deion Sanders gathered his teammates for a prayer.
These over-the-top instances are relatively rare, as far as trash talking goes. It's not even funny, which is the idea behind heckling in the first place. A good one-liner is one thing. A crack at a 21-year-old's murdered friend is quite another.
There is, after all, a fine art to trash talking. Ideally, a fan is able to insult the target of his ire and make the people around him laugh. If you're really good, even the guy being heckled will laugh. Remember the story about John Mabry? He cracked a grin that almost convinced me he was enjoying himself.
But there's a line that reasonable fans must strive not to breach. Lawrence Roberts didn't laugh at the taunts aimed at him, and thankfully, neither did anybody else even fans who were rooting against Roberts.
When the reaction is no reaction at all, you can probably bet with certainty that the line has been crossed.
