Paul Kengor: Baseball Karen and ballpark vulgarity

You may have seen the viral video of a disturbing moment at a Philadelphia Phillies vs. Miami Marlins game. A dad fetched a home-run ball for his son — for his birthday. As always in these situations, fans scrambled for the ball but applauded the lucky person who ended up with the prize.

But not everyone was so gracious.

An angry woman marched over to the dad and boy and berated them. She grabbed the father and got in his face. The stunned father was shaken (he literally shook). The kid looked scared. Hoping to diffuse the situation, the dad gave the unyielding woman the ball. The vulgarian stomped off victorious, oblivious to her crudeness.

Surrounding fans booed. The TV announcers were appalled. Stadium staff sought out the boy. The player who hit the ball met with him after the game and gave him a baseball bat.

The unidentified woman has been dubbed “Baseball Karen.”

What happened has become one of those unexpected cultural moments that has social media buzzing over the woman’s behavior, the dad’s response and the general collapse of culture. Personally, the incident prompts me to write about something I’ve wanted to vent about for some time.

Consistent with the culture’s decline in decency, the behavior we’re witnessing at sporting events is shocking. Increasingly, it’s a risk to take your kid to a baseball or football game.

We could all share examples of what we’ve seen. I could fill this page with them.

A few weeks ago, I watched the Pirates host the Blue Jays at PNC Park. After the game, I saw a few teenage boys good-naturedly ribbing noisy Blue Jays fans. One of the fans reacted by loudly and explicitly ordering the boys to perform a sexual act on Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

That incident reminded me of what my friend Michael told me about a Cleveland Browns game he attended with his 8-year-old. After getting beer poured on them (when it wasn’t flowing down the aisle onto their feet), they listened to Browns fans accuse Steelers QB Tommy Maddox of various sexual acts with other Steelers’ players.

Michael got his son out of there.

My friend Lee, a longtime Buffalo Bills fan who once never missed a game, returned to the stadium for the first time in years to watch the Bills play the New York Jets. He was aghast as fans started cursing a girl wearing a Jets jersey. One Bills girl snapped at the Jets girl: “I hope you get raped!”

I was at a Browns-Steelers game two years ago. The woman seated next to me was so drunk that she spent most of the game in a stupor. At one point, she mumbled something to me. I struggled to understand her, which only aggravated her. She whispered something to her drunk boyfriend. He got angry. I told my son, “We better leave.”

The last thing I wanted, of course, was a physical altercation.

Would that have been unusual? Certainly not. Here’s a shocking cultural indicator: many stadiums now have jails. That is, temporary holding cells for out-of-control fans. There’s even an A&E channel show about this, called “Stadium Lockup.”

Given our culture’s vulgarity in just about everything, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. Sadly, Baseball Karen is a metaphor for the ugliness that prevails in our culture, all the way to the ballpark.