Trouble in Wrigleyville

The good of the Chicago Cubs have come under fire this week for their antics inside of Wrigley Field and racism outside of it.

Can you believe it?

The first shot fired this week came from Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman, who gave his two cents worth on what he thinks about Cubs fans at Wrigley Field during Wednesday night's game.

Marty called into ESPN Radio 1000 on Friday to back his Wednesday comments and to add more technicolor on how he really thinks.

The second shot came from the Chicago Sun-Times, which printed a column about a vendor outside of Wrigley Field that sold t-shirts that made a characakture of Japanese people and specifically Kosuke Fukudome.

In this case, the Cubs immediately reacted to the story and shut down the vendor, although it did take a Chicago Sun-Times column for them to take action.

Some Cubs fans think this is funny. Fukudome does not.

The South Side of Chicago supposedly owns the bad reputation for poor fan behavior - most of it stems from the two morons who jumped the field while drunk to attack an umpire and a first base coach a few years back.

I think we can say that the perception will start to change. Finally the media will start to figure what fans of opposing teams have known for a while: Wrigley Field is not a great shrine to Americana and baseball and all that is pure in sports, but rather it is quite possibly the world's largest fraternity party on any given day with drunken fans more concerned about trying to get a girl or finding a seat at one of the thousand bars that surround the ball park after the game. 

It's not about baseball at Wrigley Field, it's about the party.

And this doesn't mean that all Cubs fans are like this. I know Cubs fans who love baseball, love the Cubs and don't act like morons when they go to Wrigley Field. I know at least two fit this criteria that read this blog.

But the fact remains that there are enough hooligans who attend Cubs games at Wrigley Field on a regular basis to make the experience of a Cubs game absolute rotten for anyone who doesn't like the Cubs. In fact, I know of situations where Cubs fans have not enjoyed their Wrigley experience because of the morons who make asses of themselves at Cubs games.

The schtick is tiring. Most of it happens at Wrigley Field, but I've also seen it happen in Cincinnati at The Great American Ball Park. I assume it also happens at US Celluar Field when the Cubs play the Sox; I've seen You Tube footage of it at Miller Park in Milwaukee. Morons who act like founding members of this drunken fraternity follow the Cubs around like they're the Grateful Dead.

What makes matters worse with moronic Cubs fans is that, perhaps until very recently, the media, Chicago Super Stations and the internet at large romanticized Cubs Fandom and all that it offered, which meant that places like Indianapolis caught onto Cubs fever and acted the part.

So now the nation wide phenomenon of moronic Cubs fan behavior is not limited to Wrigley Field; it can happen anywhere and at anytime.

I know as a White Sox fan I am not 100% clean on this. I've seen a number of t-shirts sold on the South Side that I don't agree with either (and to be fair, the Sun-Times ought to run a similar story about them ... especially the gay bashing ones). By and large, based upon my experience, White Sox fans as a whole don't act like a bunch of morons at the ballpark and actually pay attention to the game.

But the fact remains that Cubs fans, like Marty Brennaman says, are the worst in the league.

And Marty is right ... Cubs fans behavior does make the rest of us want to see them lose. I could not have said it better myself.

I'm glad this is getting some attention. It's too bad that the Cubs fans in question are too dumb to figure it out.