Camden Yards has a ton of elements to it that make watching baseball enjoyable. Great food, a winning team and a fantastic fan base, just to name a few.
Another thing that makes baseball exciting is booing opposing teams because it’s just what baseball fans do. However, things step up a notch when the Yankees come to town, bringing with them players like Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez.
It’s only natural to boo Teixeira, as the local product turned down playing for his hometown team for a division rival. It’s an unforgivable act that Baltimore fans will – and should – never forget.
However, Rodriguez comes up to the plate and the jeers are twice as loud as Teixeira’s. Fans are screaming obscenities, “cheater!” is being thrown out there and, famously, even one fan was caught turning his back to every at-bat of A-Rod’s.
The problem with this scenario is that Rodriguez is no different than many former Orioles. It’s even more ironic when the booing rains down while Everth Cabrera looks on from shortstop for the home team. It’s as if people forget Cabrera was handed down a 50-game suspension for PEDs, getting caught just like Rodriguez.
Fellow Eutaw Street Report writer Matt Sroka mentioned that he jeers A-Rod simply because he is a villain and that he wants to keep those morals out of baseball.
That’s a statement baseball fans should live by, and an understanding they should take with them to games. The problem is that there are a lot of fans who don’t have that impression and only jeer Rodriguez because he “cheated.”
It’s hypocritical for Baltimore fans to taunt steroid uses because the Orioles, sadly, have had plenty of their own. Think about it like this: we got mad when opposing fans would yell “STEROIDS!” at Chris Davis during his amazing 2013 run, even though he’d never been caught using PEDs. After he was busted for using Adderall – NOT a steroid – in 2014, those jeers got even louder. While it would be nice to sit down with every single idiot who yells “steroids!” at Davis and explain to them what a steroid is compared to what ADD medications are, who has the time?
That’s what it’s surely like for Yankees fans who hear O’s fans yell “cheater!” at A.Rod, after the O’s have employed Davis, Cabrera, and Nelson Cruz in recent years, and Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Larry Bigbie, and others in the not-so-distant past.
Go to the game and cheer on the Orioles as a team and jeer the Yankees – or whatever team is playing – for the right reasons. Jeer A.Rod for being a narcissist who kisses his own reflection in a mirror, for lying about his PED use for years, for trying to slap the ball out of a defender’s glove, or just for being a really good baseball player for a long time on teams not named “Orioles.” The options are limitless. Just don’t do it because he’s a “cheater.”
Don’t get caught up in the politics of baseball; it’ll only confuse you, and take away from what should be an enjoyable game.
