Word: fannings
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When spectators saw that they and athletes have similar lives, fan involvement increased. The increased fan identification with the players led to the bottle-throwing incident in Shea Stadium during last season's N.L. playoffs. Poor little Bud Harrelson had to be protected from the big brute, Pete Rose, and bottles were a handy weapon...
Lest I be accused of favoritism toward my home town, the Chicago Cubs's Bleacher Bums are also notorious for their immature behavior. They threw crutches at the Reds' Pete Rose and pennies at ex-Cardinal outfielder Lou Brock. One fan even poured beer on Roger Maris, then of the Cards, as he prepared to catch a fly against the wall...
Explanations for this rash of fan violence, however, must focus on the evolution of both the fans' and the players' attitudes...
...important part of this growing fan cynicism is the professional athlete's increasing preoccupation with money. This is not to condemn the athletes, for they were underpaid in the past. Yet while competition between leagues has increased salaries, so too has it torn down the veneer of awe that used to separate the fan and the player. The player has become a highly publicized, salaried worker. He has stepped down from the pedestal as a result of his own doing. Like other American workers, he goes to the highest bidder...
...always stalled, while short wiry policemen with sunglasses and tremendous black women stood on streetcorners as if for some common purpose. Not too far away were what had been the grandest of the old houses in town, three or four large places with New Orleans iron balconies and fan lights over the door, where a judge or banker could have lived. The columns had warped with rot and cracked open. In one of these houses lived a crazy old lady of the Capote/Faulkner stamp, her house full of wilted memories and flowers, whose special craziness was keeping turtles, five...