Dumbphones and Baseball

Vickie and I went to a few Richmond Flying Squirrels baseball games this year; in addition to watching the games we watched the fans.

There was the guy behind us one night that drank too much before arriving at the game and who continued drinking after his arrival; this was the only instance of this we encountered during the season. If he had kept it up someone would have likely complained to management but as it turns out his wife or girlfriend finally had enough and when she left he left. After he left a man sitting next to him said, “It’s a good thing he left on his own, I saw that he had a pistol.” Indeed.

Then there was the man and woman who appeared to have just met each other as part of a group of friends at the game, they sat in front of us. He spent the entire game talking to her and she spent the entire game appearing impressed by what he was saying – I don’t think they watched one play of the baseball game since they were playing their own game.

A behavior that we saw at every game was Dumbphone obsession; people texting and emailing throughout the game. This behavior spanned age groups, it included young adults and it included older people. The saddest exhibition of it was the night a dad was sitting with his son who looked to be around 5 years old. The son was really into the ball game, talking to the players, trying to encouragement them; displaying joy and excitement at the play on the field; he was a cute little boy. He tried to talk to his father about the game, to share his experience with his father, but the father was too busy doing…guess what? Yep, he was on his Dumbphone. Finally, after a few innings the little boy moved down a couple of seats and sat with an older couple and talked to them. Talk about spending time with your son; a microcosm of life today.