Phun phor Phillies phans, Phart 2

I don’t mind standing. I think we sit entirely too much, and as long as the scenery is good, standing is good. I can move around, and since I’m taller than most, I can usually see pretty well.

When I do mind standing is when the people in front of me are standing while the rest of us are sitting. Early in the game, I realized that the two kids in front of me were “standers.” You know the kind - the ones who have to jump up out of their seats every time something mildly exciting happens. It’s great for them, but Hell for the rest of us. My general opinion of people like that is that they have no self-awareness. Their world extends to the boundaries of their hands and feet, with no regard to the world of the people around them. For great stretches of time, they would stand; chatting, looking around, and forming a little human wall. It’s sort of like being stuck in traffic behind a big truck. For miles, all you can see is the back end. Before it got out of hand – sometime around the second inning – I gently nudged one of them and asked, “Hey fellas, could ya?” [Motioning down with my hand] They obliged, but the guy sitting to my right seemed offended somehow. “Sometimes ya gotta stand,” he proclaimed, to which I replied, “No you don’t.”

I need a human behavior specialist to explain to me the compunction for standing, when it serves no purpose other than … standing. I think it’s rude if the people behind you aren’t standing too. Naturally, I was more comfortable in “standing room”, where there is only room to stand. It was cooler up there, too; and I also didn’t have to deal with the swinging towel of the kid sitting next to me. Towel-swinging is generally something you only do a few times a year, so being good at it takes time. The occasional towel-end to the ear is excusable once or twice, but after a dozen or so, it gets to be a bit much. With my towel on my head as a sun shield, I was powerless to swing back. Besides, the kid was enjoying himself, and he wasn’t doing it on purpose – I think.

Hey – there’s a ballgame going on.

So, as they say, if you don’t like the program, change the channel. That’s how I wound up in the standing room area. It was only a few rows further back, and it had that shade thing going. From what they told us, only 500 standing room tickets were sold. If that’s the case, then all 500 must have been in the 200 level in right field. My guess is that some of them sneaked in or were let in by friends at the gate, because I would have figured it to be more like a thousand or more.

Another thing I noticed was that there weren’t a lot of people getting up and moving around during the game. Usually, around the fifth inning, hoards of fans get up and run to the rest room or the food stands. On Sunday, they were either bringing their own food or holding their bladder, because none of us wanted to miss a pitch. I don’t know the figures, but I’ll bet that the concession stands had a bad day. There were over 45,000 people in the ballpark, and I’ll bet they threw a lot of food away. I had a hot dog and a bottle of water in the 6th inning, and the wait time was down to zero. The price, however, was not. $7.50, please. Thank you, and enjoy the game.

Now I’m fed, hydrated and cool and ready for a little history.

NEXT: The “absorbing the ambience” part.