Fun and Fear at the Baseball Stadium

My son Max and I went to the Isotopes game on Saturday night of the 4^th of July weekend; the stadium was packed. Unfortunately, there was a game delay because of rain in the 4^th inning and we left; fortunately, our tickets were a gift.

It’s the story of what happened while we were leaving that I want to tell. First, let me set the stage. When we entered the stadium, a little after the game started, we had to walk around a group of about eight Albuquerque Police Department cops who were standing in a line a few yards in from the gate, doing nothing except talking and laughing with each other. Max and I figured they were there for “crowd control,” which will become a very ironic supposition as this story progresses.

I was feeling like an ice cream so we walked along the mezzanine where all the food booths sell every kind of fast food—and beer—you can imagine: hot dogs, pizza,  cotton candy, etc. When I finally spotted what I thought was ice cream I saw that it was made up of some weird kind of colored dots that looked like sprinkles, dubbed “Dippin’ Dots.” I declined. Just imagine if those food booths had been in India or Palestine or Mexico: tandoori chicken or curried rice; lamb kebobs or humus; tacos al pastor or guacamole. You know, tasty, healthy (in my humble opinion), real food.

In our seats, ice-cream-less, the view of the Sandias was spectacular but I couldn’t help reflecting on what the stadium was like 25 years ago when we went to see the Albuquerque Dukes. All the parents with little kids sat up in the bleachers and looked down on the seats with backs where the leisured class paid a whopping ten bucks to sit; we paid three or four. The kids ran around the bleachers playing and tracking down the snow cone man while we drank the beer we brought to the game in our backpacks before Homeland Security invaded our privacy. When the Dukes came off the field after the game the kids were there hanging over the railing next to the dugout waiting for autographs, which the Dodger farm team players, many of whom later became famous, graciously supplied. 

Back to 2014. We had just settled into the flow of the game when the rain began. The officials quickly called a rain delay and the workers laid out the plastic rain tarp over the field. Max and I got up, along with just about everyone else in our section, and climbed the stairs to the covered mezzanine where we all stood around trying to decide, as The Clash put it, “should we stay or should we go.” After a few minutes of this indecision we realized we’d better start heading for the stadium exit in case we decided on the “we should go” part of the equation. But then we realized that getting to that gate was not going to be easy, partly because everyone else was milling around, undecided as well. And the crush of people kept swelling with more undecideds coming up from their seats as the rain intensified.

Suddenly we snapped: this scenario could be a set up for the ones you always hear about in soccer stadiums when suddenly people trample each other to get out the gate. Already, a woman came pushing through the crowd, followed by her children, saying “I’m going to be sick” and we went right after her, Max leading the way (he’s a big guy from all his weight lifting), me holding on, saying, “If I die I bequeath everything I own to you and Jakob (my other son). Sell the house and split the proceeds.”

There wasn’t a cop in sight, either in the crush of humanity or at the exit gate, doing “crowd control.” We finally burst out the gate into the rain. As we walked toward the parking lot several ambulances came careening down the street. I never found out if they were there for injuries people may have sustained in that crush, but what I’d really like to know is just what the fuck those cops were doing during that scary time. Or then again, maybe their absence was a blessing; we’re all more afraid of what they’re capable of doing—lasers, batons, guns—than we are of the scary situations.