Mexican baseball: Dodger blues
Dear Mexican:
I recently went to a Los Angeles Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium. It was good to see the familias having fun with their children, pero I then saw and heard something disturbing. There will always be rivalries in any sport, of course, pero the white people cheering for the St. Louis Cardinals would clap and cheer when their team did something good. When the Dodgers did good, the Mexican fans—mostly homeboys and paisas—were yelling profanities and flipping off other people. It was very sad that they would display such language in front of innocent, young, impressionable children, and it upset me that they made Mexicans look like ruthless, ignorant animals.
I was compelled to go up to those Cardinals fans, and I made sure the Dodgers fans were looking. I said to the güeros, “I apologize for these ignorant young men who don’t know how to behave like a civilized adult at a sporting event.” It’s bad enough our culture gets a bad rap, but they shouldn’t add leña to the fuego. Was I wrong to stand up and excuse them?
—Garciaparra Girl
Dear Wabette:
No. It’s always noble and a bit antiquated to ask for decency in this modern mundo, but you’re waging a Sisyphean battle if you think you can reform foul-mouthed Dodgers devotees—and not because they’re a bunch of Mexicans. Remember that “fan” in the context of sports is short for “fanatic,” and then tune into ESPN Classic and wait for footage of Disco Demolition Night to air. Dig all those long-haired gabachos! If that 1979 Chicago White Sox fiasco still doesn’t convince you about the innate savagery of sports fans, then buy the 2003 tome The Great Philadelphia Fan Book and marvel at how Mexican Philadelphians can act when placed before loser squads. And don’t forget the followers of the Oakland Raiders, New York Giants/Mets/Jets/Yankees/Knicks … really, any major-league rooter except those pussies who cheer for the baseball Cardinals.
I read your column every week and notice your ongoing theme of pushing for “immigration reform.” I realize your concern for your fellow compadres, but what of those of us who see that our country is becoming simply too overcrowded, and too Hispanicized? In Plano, Texas, my grocery began putting up directional signs only in Spanish. At my school that I taught at in Dallas, all the blacks left and their places filled by the illegals’ children. And because I don’t speak Spanish, I was forced into an early retirement. First, we need a zero population growth mentality. I used to be a Catholic, but in this day and age, pushing for no birth control is insane. So do you believe we should just open up the country to anyone and everyone? Where do we draw the line?
—Randy for Romo
Dear Gabacha:
Damn, chula: get yourself together! Your question scatters across rhyme and reason like Mexicans spilling out of a hole in the border fence. I’ll address pero one part of your pregunta: the idea that Mexicans are irredeemably Hispanicizing the United States. For your answer, I turn ¡Ask a Mexican! over to the chingón satirist of his time, Benjamin Franklin:
Why should the Palatine Boors [Germans] be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.
Last I checked, the most German thing remaining in Pennsylvania were the Amish, and they’re more American than the Phillie Phanatic. Though Mexicans are influencing the culture of America, the Republic always absorbs its idiot immigrants and becomes richer for it—and if you don’t believe me, then ask yourself why Franklin was proven such a schmendrick, or why a Mexican uses Yiddish as part of his fakakta shtick.