Karl Klockars

Joe Francis is more than just a sleazy pornographer of drunken co-eds.  He’s an evolutionary biologist.  If you have any doubt whatsoever that the female of the species is hardwired to jump up and down and go “woo” when a camera is put on them (while in a crowd, at least), you have to look no further than the “fan cam” at any major sporting event.

Okay, maybe it’s more of a Pavlovian experiment.  Van Halen music plus blinking red light above camera lens plus 35,000 people around you leads to a bouncy reaction – is it nature or nurture?  Have we bred this into ourselves?  Ring a bell and get a prize?

We were at the Tigers game last night and it worked nearly without fail – the cameraman, who seemed to have a preference for blondes (this may impact the experiment, scientists) would turn on some bass-heavy 80′s era rock tune and focus on some towhead in a tight shirt.  The effects were immediate and impressive – waving, jumping up and down, yelling “woo.”

And these were not just 19 year olds scamming plastic bottles of Miller Swill from the vendor trying to get into their pants.  These were growned-up wimmens, full of life experience and presumably out of the Sorotute mindset.  Still, the jumping and the woo-ing and the thrusting forward of the general upper-torso area persists.  Amazing.

This demands further study – I recommend the upcoming preseason Bears game tomorrow night.  God knows there isn’t going to be much to watch on the field, so let’s turn some cameras on the crowd and make that megascreen interesting for a change.  Woo.

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I should reiterate what I believe I’ve said before – baseball allows me to yell at my wife.  I don’t know how many relationships work where you have a few three-day stands where you get to talk a whole lot of shit to each other.  And perhaps I’d be missing out on this if I were still a Cubs fan.  But every time the Tigers come to town, we get to shout at each other and nobody can call the cops.  Well, they can, but when they see The Girl all dolled up in her Detroit baseball cap and Tigers jersey, Restoring the Roar, they’ll understand.  “Carry on, folks – but try to keep it down.”

I personally don’t know if it allows either of us any kind of release valve for any tensions that might exist – truth be told, I don’t do much of the yelling.  But she tells me to “eat it,” followed by “eat it big time!” at every occasion, and then woo-hoos and points and ha-has.  This goes double for homeruns, especially homers in the first inning.  That was a bad moment, and set the tone for the rest of the night.

The Girl is neither a good winner nor a good loser – ask about our epic, cussfilled Dr. Mario battles – which is fine.  But regardless of what happens, when I look at her gazing down appreciatively at her ball team of choice and then gets to tell me I suck every time a base hit happens, I get the feeling like she’s a little bit happier.  I’m more than happy to eat things, big time, a dozen games a year if it makes her glad.

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For my money, you can’t find a better sporting experience in the regular season than a Detroit/White Sox baseball game.  In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a whole hell of a lot of Michiganders in this here town – many kids in the mitten graduate from UofM and MSU and come to Chicago to prove that “if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere.”  And then maybe when Michigan exits the Great Depression, they’ll go back.

But until then, many of those Michiganders are displaced Tigers fans.  And so, so many of them are happy to show up and cheer for their team.  On the Red Line ride down to Sox/35th, I believe I had my head in the armpit of a Tigers fan, and my feet were stomped on by at least a couple people in an orange-blue-white jersey.

No matter.  The interplay in the stands is the best it gets all year – friendly interaction between, it would seem, nearly equal amounts of fans.  If we could split the fans right down the middle, with Sox fans on the left field side and Tigers down the right, we could yell back and forth at each other.

Can you get that at any other sporting event?  Because there’s so many Sox/Tigers games, there’s not the forced, “this is it for the year so let’s get vicious” feeling that you get at Sox/Cubs games.  Cubs/Cards games might come close but I wouldn’t know.  I get the feeling that it’s a little more meanspirited, but I could be wrong.  Bears/Anyone?  Since there’s only 16 or so games, you only get a shot or two to get out all that ire towards the other team, so it’s packed into a few short hours.  Blackhawks?  Hawks who?  Tigers/Sox?  You’ve got 15 games – 135 innings or so.  No rush.  Nice and groovy.  Let’s have a Beck’s and a polish sausage.

Let’s eat it.  Eat it big time.