Cubs fans obnoxious? Of course

The college kid sat in the right-field bleachers at Wrigley Field.

Some Cardinals were taking batting practice. Some were shagging flyballs in the outfield.

The kid shouted down toward the warning track, "Sir! Sir! How about a ball up here? Please! Just one? Please!"

Finally, probably to shut him up, one of the Cardinals turned around and tossed a ball up.

"Thank you!" the kid yelled down. "But you're still a (bleeping) jerk!"

The time was the mid-1960s. The player was Cardinals catcher Tim McCarver. The idiot fan was on his way toward becoming an idiot sports writer.

Yes, sorry to say, he was me and I am him. It's nothing to be proud of.

No wonder, then, that I found it amusing last week that Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman created a fuss by calling Cubs fans obnoxious.

My reaction: What else is new?

The basket ringing the top of the outfield wall isn't decorative, you know. It was positioned above the ivy in 1970 to keep fans and trash -- often one and the same -- from falling to the field.

This ballpark's most endearing quality is intimacy. The problem is that the closer to the action fans are, the more some want to be part of the game.

Wrigley Field customers come from all over with various allegiances -- to the Cubs, the ballpark, the opponent -- and myriad causes to be obnoxious.

They might have had a bad day at the office or in class … maybe had a fight with the wife or girlfriend or both … maybe had too much sun or suds or both.

Regardless, not many of them would resent the designation Brennaman hung on them.

"Obnoxious sports fan" is a redundancy anyway. Stadiums are like college campuses, where immaturity isn't just an excuse to be obnoxious but a license.

Brennaman was correct in saying Cubs fans were wrong for throwing baseballs onto the field after a Reds home run.

I shudder to think what Brennaman would have said if he saw the racially insensitive T-shirts relating to Koskuke Fukudome that were sold and bought outside the ballpark.

Listen, Brennaman might even have been correct to call Wrigley Field fans the most obnoxious in baseball.

The primary counterpoint to Brennaman's point is there isn't a counterpoint. Cubs fans are obnoxious. If they are baseball's most obnoxious, it's a badge they'll wear with honor.

You can't blame them for being what they are, can you? Does anybody anywhere in any sport have any more reason to be obnoxious than Cubs fans have? Has any other franchise's fans gone 99 seasons without the big payoff?

If one has, let me know and I'll send them a condolence card.

A Cubs fan is like an employee who can't get a raise, keeps watching others be promoted over him and still loves his job too much to quit.

Just imagine how much money these people would have spent on psychiatric care if they couldn't participate in group therapy at the old ballpark.

A half-century ago Warren Spahn looked up to the bleachers during batting practice and said to fellow Braves pitcher Lew Burdette, "Hey, Lew, look, now we don't have to go to the zoo."

A half-century later, obnoxious fans are nothing new in the primate house that is Wrigley Field.