To BOO or Not to Boo

I hear a lot of whining by players, coaches and even other fans about Booing. Well, if you know me, you already know my opinion on this, but for those that don't, here you go. Let me just say that I don't bottle up my feelings and nobody sitting in my section says to themselves "gee, I wonder what that guy thought about that play". If I pay good money to see a PRO sports event (NOT applicable to college or high school), I have an expected level of performance and that level is pretty high and not only associated with the players, but also the refs/umps and entertainment. If any aspect does not meet my expectation, then I let them know with a loud and boisterous BOO. I have had Bulls season tickets for 10 years now so I have seen some HORENDOUS baseketball. When the people that sit in front of me show up, I try to warn them anout the pending BOOs.

If players and refs don't want to hear me boo, they have lots of choices. First, they can find another line of work - good luck with that. I often hear the argument from players that "I don't come to your office to boo you". No, you probably don't but that's because you don't pay my salary where the fans do pay the players' salary. Second and the most preferred would be for them to actually play or call the game better. I don't do nearly as much booing at baseball games at not towards the umpires as I find that they're all pretty good. Sure, there are bad calls here and there and the balls/strikes calls aren't always as consistent as I would like them to be which sometimes illicits a Boo, the calls are typically pretty good. However at NBA games, the officiating is just plain AWFUL. I have written emails to most of the sports writers in this town to err my complaints and most of them agree with me. I always hear that Jordan always got all the calls and now the officials are making up for that with this team. Ya, like that makes a lot of sense. There is one other alternative I can think of to booing. How about allowing feedback for each ref/, each player, and each coach?

Well, this isn't about booing officials as most people don't have issues with that well, except the officials maybe. This is about booing the home team players. So is it OK to boo the home team or not? I certainly think so. Again, I paid good money to see a game and root on my home team. I mentioned in my bio that I'm fanatic and as such, I allow bad games from my home teams to ruin my day/night. So if I start to see a bad mood on my horizon, I feel the need to express myself. And its not like I am the only one booing although I may indeed be the loudest. They don't let us fans communicate directly with the players so all we have is to clap when we're happy and boo when we're not. I truly don't see a problem with that. What am I hurting their feelings? Doesn't the multi-million dollar contract make up for that a little bit? This is Chicago baby! You want to earn our respect and admiration? PLAY HARD! It really isn't that difficult of a formula. You play lackadaisical, you WILL get booed. If it isn't me, it will be plenty of other people.

Short of that, I don't see that I even have a choice but to BOO. How else am I going to express my opinion? Provide constructive feedback to the offending party? It's not just about the BOO for me either - I am all about yelling as well as sometimes it seems that they really need to no precisely what I am displeased with. Now, I have three kids and I often have 1 or more of them with me and even when I don't, I am sensitive to my language in front of the younger fans that may be present, so I do keep the language clean. Most of the time, I get laughs from the people sitting near me.

A sub-category of BOOing is heckling and this is typically limited to the opposing team and their fans. I'm pretty good at this too. My first recollection of heckling was funny, but not terribly effective. My dad had my brothers and I at the Cubs' game in the LF bleachers. The Cubs were battling the Astros in a day game back in the early 80s. In those days, Jose Cruz (not Jr) was patrolling LF for the Astros. We were a little young to be taking part in the heckling, but I'll never forget the chant they used - "Fe Fi Fo Fum, Jose Cruz is a {bleeping} bum!" Well, he had a career day against the Cubs that day (3-for-5, 2B, HR, BB, 5 RBIs, and a SB in a 14-12 Cubs loss) and I have to think the hecklers in those LF bleachers had a heck of a lot to do with it. See, I learned from that - there are some guys where you can get in their head but there are a LOT of guys that focus that much more just to stick it to the hecklers. Reggie Miller falls in that category - just ask Spike Lee and the Knicks. How about LeBron in that game where Chris Bosh's girlfriend and her friend started razzing him and the Cavs came back from a 17-point 4th quarter deficit? LeBron went for 24 in the quarter.

I do have to give my brother some props for the best heckle ever. The funny part is the guy he heckled was actually a fan for the opposing team (Portland Trail Blazers) at the United Center. How do we know he was a fan for the other team? Because he was wearing a Brandon Roy jersey - one of the expensive ones. Now most pasty white guys (myself included) wear some sort of shirt under the NBA jersey since it is a tank top but this guy did not. Well my brother shouted at him "put a shirt on pasty!" Not only did everyone around us know exactly who he was talking about, but the guy must have heard him as he walked out righ then. Now that would be funny enough, right? But no...there's more. the guy comes back a few minutes later wearing a t-shirt under his jersey. Priceless! See you can heckle for good too!