In our weekly video chat, Noah Coslov of CineSport asked if I believed Braves fans would have reacted to the return of a tarnished Brave the way Milwaukee patrons did before Ryan Braun’s first plate appearance of the regular season. Namely, by affording the liar/PED user a standing ovation. I said I thought the greeting might have been less effusive — a sitting ovation — but warm all the same.
Only after our chat had been committed to megabytes did I realize my error. Would Atlanta fans have risen to salute Braun if he had been a Brave? Sure they would.
As much as folks might want to think, “We around here would never be so crass as to stand and salute a liar/PED user,” the cold truth is that fandom transcends geography. If a guy plays for Our Team, he’s Our Guy — even if we have to hold our nose while administering a figurative embrace.
Barry Bonds, the least-liked player of the modern era, is always greeted by cheers in San Francisco. (Even fans in Pittsburgh, where Bonds last played in 1992, offered a mixture of cheers and boos when he presented the MVP plaque to Andrew McCutchen at PNC Park on Monday.) Alex Rodriguez, a close runner-up to Bonds in the Despised Derby, drew as many cheers as boos when he returned to Yankee Stadium during the appeal of his PED suspension last year, and New Yorkers are renowned for their readiness to boo anybody.
As someone who grew up 65 miles from Cincinnati, I can attest that Pete Rose was my second-favorite Red. (After Lee May, who was traded to Houston for Joe Morgan, who won consecutive MVP awards and became the best second baseman of all time, but never convinced me that the trade was a good one.) I was aware that Rose was roundly hated in every other National League city, and I cared not one whit. He played for the Reds. ’Nuff said.
And that, let’s note, was in an era when players changed teams only when they were traded. (Here again I weep bitter tears for Lee May.) Jerry Seinfeld’s line about fans not rooting so much for players as for jerseys — Seinfeld: “We root for laundry!” — was a reaction to free agency, where rosters are razed and rebuilt every winter. With names and faces changing year over year if not month over month, what’s left for the fan to clutch but a swath of cloth?
As long as a guy wears the laundry of the hometown team, he’ll get the benefit of every hometown doubt. As excessive as the Braun response might have seemed to us around here, we Atlantans can’t in good conscience look down on Milwaukee, not after our response to John Rocker.
Granted, some of his teammates couldn’t stand the guy. Granted, the police contingent at Shea Stadium had to be doubled when Rocker returned to Queens after his infamous Sports Illustrated diatribe against humanity in general and New York in particular. Still, there was no civic outcry when he galumphed in from the bullpen in Atlanta. As long as he was saving games, Braves fans didn’t much care.
(Say what you will about fans, but they’re the ultimate pragmatists. Deliver, and they’ll love you. Fail, and they’ll love you less. Go play for some other team, and they’re liable to hate your guts. Check the razzing Melky Cabrera, a Brave for one undistinguished year, receives when he returns to Turner Field.)
From the Associated Press on April 19, 2000: “John Rocker returned to a standing ovation Tuesday night, pitching a scoreless ninth inning in his first game since rejoining the Atlanta Braves after a two-week (post-SI) suspension. The crowd of 34,903 gave Rocker a big cheer when the reliever ran in from the bullpen. One fan held up a sign that read: ‘Rocker for President.’ ”
Understand: I’m not saying fans are worse in Atlanta than anywhere else. I’m saying that fans are the same everywhere — from New York to L.A., from Milwaukee to Minnesota. They love Their Team, which means they love Their Guys. Kent Hrbek became Public Enemy No. 1 in Atlanta for leg-lifting Ron Gant off first base during the 1991 World Series, but in the Twin Cities he’s Good Ol’ Herbie, the guy who hasn’t paid for a beverage since.
If those of us who aren’t Brewers fans were appalled by the ovation for Braun, that’s only because we managed to contract a convenient case of cognitive dissonance. Rocker also got a standing O, and that wasn’t because everyone in Turner Field that April night supported his worldview. He just happened to be sporting the right laundry.
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