Mr. Usher, I Have a Complaint

At the beginning of each game, the Fenway Park announcer and the electronic scoreboard announce a special security hotline that fans can call from their cell phones to report someone who is interfering with their enjoyment of the game. That's what they say, "If someone is interfering with your enjoyment of the game, call the Fenway Park security hotline," or something very close to that.

So picture, if you will, the following scenario. I'm at last Saturday's game vs. the Mariners, it's the bottom of the second, no score, and Seattle's Joel Piñeiro has loaded the bases with nobody out. And the crowd goes wild, until this happens:

• Alex Gonzalez strikes out looking.
• Adam Stern strikes out swinging.
• Alex Cora grounds out to second.

Really, nobody could have blamed me at that moment if I had called that special security hotline. "Hello, Fenway Park security hotline? Joel Piñeiro is interfering with my enjoyment of the game!" Click.

Later I asked my game companion and blog-mate, Beazer, if she thought anyone had ever made such a call to the special security hotline. We laughed about it at the time, but in retrospect there were actually several moments throughout the afternoon that I considered to be very good reasons to make that call. Among them:

• The sexist pig sitting next to me who insisted that Wily Mo Peña's ground rule double (the one that hit the warning track before bouncing into the bullpen) was really a home run. He stuck to his story despite my patient and repeated explanations to the contrary, right up until the man in front of him said the same thing. Excuse me, but did he not notice that I was keeping a meticulous scorecard while the yahoo in front of him was acting like an adolescent with his friends?


• Josh Bard and his two passed balls in the top of the third.


• The Johnny Damon butt boy behind us who wouldn't stop pontificating about how "real fans" won't boo Damon when he returns to Fenway as a Yankee. Um, yes, we will. He is no longer Johnny Damon; he is Judas Demon.


• Everyone who just had to get up and go to the concession stands every stinkin' time the Red Sox were at bat. Hello, people, are you paying absolutely no attention to the game?


• Adam Stern, 0-for-4 with three strikeouts. That's what you get for playing during Passover, you heathen.


• The "fan" who triumphantly started throwing around a beach ball the size of Neptune, designed to obstruct the view of the greatest possible number of people. It took seven seconds for it to drift over about a few sections, and then I never saw it again, which was justice.


• Carl Everett. Just because.

On the other hand, Tim Wakefield did manage to keep us in the game, I didn't spill my beer even once, and the weather was a sunny 65° at game time. And even if it weren't, a bad day at the ballpark is better than a good day almost anywhere else.