Stephanie and I whiled away the pre-Subway Series hours at the Liberty‘s first game of the 2008 season this afternoon. The bad news is the Liberty lost to the Connecticut Sun pretty convincingly. The good news was Jimmy Rollins was nowhere in sight. Score one for the WNBA where home openers are concerned.
One idea the Mets will not want to adopt from their distant, distaff New York sporting cousins at the Garden: before tipoff, the scoreboard encouraged us to “stand and clap until we score.” A drumlike sound effect pounded home the point.
THUMP!
The Liberty don’t score.
THUMP!
The Liberty don’t score.
THUMP!
The Liberty don’t score.
Bottom — THUMP! — line is this ostentatious admonition continued for the first 2:04 of the game while the Sun jumped out to a 5-0 lead. The THUMP!ing paused during a Connecticut free throw, but otherwise underscored just how embarrassing it was to promise your fans a bucket and not deliver.
By the time the Libs sunk one, not too many were standing or clapping…and a quarter of the crowd was composed of preadolescent girls who are prone to doing that stuff anyway.
All I could think, naturally, was I’m sure glad the Mets didn’t urge us to do the same this past Thursday when we could have stood, clapped, taken up aerobics, twisted ourselves into pretzels and screamed our heads off for nine innings waiting for the Mets to score and we would have gone home very tired, very achy and very disappointed.
I mean more so.
“… a quarter of the crowd was composed of preadolescent girls who are prone to doing that stuff anyway.”
Was Elijah Dukes leading the cheers?
A Mystics season ticketholder, I hear.
Of course I may be on a watch list of some sort if the threats I was making toward a certain umpiring crew were overheard by authorities.
This absolute nonsense is new this season, and I hope it dies a quick and silent death. Really, in what universe do New Yorkers need to be told to make noise?
Amen, whatever the sport or the venue.