Welcome Back, Baseball:
A Fan Base Grows In Brooklyn

Seth Kolloen

Over drinks at a Manhattan nightclub, a friend remarked to me how "amazing" it is that the new Brooklyn Cyclones minor league team has now sold out nearly 2/3 of the season.

But is it so amazing that Brooklyn, which, with 2.4 million residents, has a greater population than Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Detroit combined, is consistently selling out an 8,000-seat ballpark? Brooklyn fans have been coming out in droves.

One of the best things about going to a minor league game is how close to the field you sit. Just about every seat at a minor league game would be VIP level, with waiter service included, at today's major league ballparks. For Cyclones fans, the proximity inspires raucous, personal cheering -- and, in true New York City fashion, jeering.

Overheard in the first few weeks of the season:

• On a swinging bunt dribbler down the first base line: "Did ya hit that or did it fall outta yer pocket?"
• After a poor throw by the Cyclones catcher: "Jeez -- ya throw like Piazza!"
• After a missed popup during a night game: "He must a lost it in the moon."

One fan got a little too spirited in the season's first week, leaping over the fence down the rightfield line and running, beer in hand, onto the field.

He ran across the outfield grass, from rightfield into shallow left-center, whooping and waving his arms as he went, like a male cheerleader at homecoming. Once he got into left-center he stopped and sort of stood there and looked around.

Soon, he was being approached, cautiously, by a KeySpan Park security guard.

Keep in mind, now, that this is not a major league game, where any field-crasher is quickly set upon by a phalanx of well-trained, fit, police officers or private security guards. Here we had one, overweight, hesitant ballpark usher trotting half-heartedly toward the guy. It wouldn't have taken Eric Dickerson to juke this pursuer -- Verne Lundquist could have done it quite neatly. That's what our inebriated imbecile did, with a wobbly stutter step past the guy.

One of the earliest stages of human evolution must have been the step from simply taking one action at a time, to stringing together a series of actions, each leading toward a pre-determined goal. In other words, planning.

It was a step that had clearly passed by this drunken, shirtless moron.

He hadn't considered what to do once he'd accomplished his original task of getting on the field. "I'm on a baseball field," you could see him thinking. "What does one do on a baseball field?" Then, suddenly, inspiration struck -- he would round the bases. He wouldn't start over, mind you, already being on the left side of the field. So he ran in to the infield, took a right turn at the shortstop. He rounded third -- still carrying his beer -- passing a bemused Mahoning Valley Scrappers base coach, and headed toward the plate, where Michael Jacobs, the Cyclones' catcher, was standing.

As the moron approached home, you could see Jacobs sizing him up. When the fellow went into a slide, Jacobs, at 6-3, 215, grabbed him by his shoulders and slammed him to the ground face first. The crowd erupted in applause as Jacobs (described aptly by the fan behind me as "baseball's best left-handed catcher who's a Jew") dug a knee into the guy's back until more security could arrive.

WORD TO THE WISE: I'm not sure about Cyclones games, but I know that people who run onto the field at Yankee or Mets games have to spend the night at Rikers Island city jail, in a holding cell with 30 or 40 other people arrested that night, most likely for much more serious offenses involving pain. And if you do it on a Friday night, since the courts aren't open over the weekend to arraign you, you get to spend the weekend.

When they aren't jeering their team, or running on the field, you hear a lot of explanation and strategizing in the stands. Yankee Stadium yuppies excepted, New York baseball fans are the smartest baseball fans I've experienced. And since Brooklyn is such a melting pot, you also hear baseball being explained and discussed in other languages. That's a kick, especially when you hear a long strain of Russian interrupted only periodically with words like "outfielders" and "home run."

Maybe it's the sea air, but the fans of Brooklyn are jazzed up every night for A-ball.

about the author

Seth Kolloen once ran on the field in an attempt to round the bases, but that was during a little league game and all he was carrying was a can of Sprite. Ask what happened when the seven-year old catcher try to tackle him when you write to sek@strikethree.com.

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