Removing Spectators

Last week I was glancing through the paper, and I was reading the sports page about the Celtics game the previous evening. What caught my eye was a brief paragraph that discussed the removal of a spectator by one of the referees. I actually didn't know that basketball refs are empowered to remove fans. I recall seeing a sports list show about the worst fans. A couple were basketball fans, and I don't recall any discussion of them being removed by the objects of their slander. In the article, the ref said that the spectator in question was loud, profane, and was sitting among a group of families with small children.

Of course, I started looking at this in the context of Kyle's article in the newsletter and the controversey around the heckling for the women's finals. I think Kyle's article is very good, and the call for heightened self-policing makes sense for an event that is attending pretty much solely by the participants.

As with any discussion about public behavior and manners, the line between good taste and offensive behavior varies with every person. I think the time is coming fast when our behavior is not just viewed within the walls of our insulated community, and that each attendee will be held to some defined standard of public decency. The art of heckling will come under scrutiny, but, maybe, limited parameters will enhance the creativity. While there will probably be tension between self-policing and an externally defined set of expectations for public behavior, hopefully folks will meet the challenge with minimum of ejections or apologies on RSD.

I think the most creative heckling I experienced was at Cornell hockey games in the '70's. As there is nothing to do in Ithaca mid-January, the game was the event in town. Lynah Rink was basically a tin shack. Very loud and raucous. The fans threw sieves out onto the ice after each Cornell goal, they blew loud airhorns, the band was rocking, and the crowd had very creative and publicly known cheers. The most hated opponent was Harvard, and the Cornell fans pulled no punches. Live chickens and fish got thrown out onto the ice and the cheers became more and more lewd. Even then, in the late 70's, with a sense that our behavior should not be regulated, the refs and Cornell officials had to draw the line, and a series of penalties including forfeiture were devised if the fans got out of hand. While the games became slightly more tame, the fans did direct themselves in more creative and less hostile ways. So, as Kyle described in the article, be aware of your behavior. I tend to view what I say, or yell, from the sidelines in terms of how would my daughter react. Is the language being used something that I feel comfortable with her hearing? Again, the line of standards is different for each of us, but this is what works for me.