Unpopular Opinion: Leave ‘Harrumph Guy’ Alone

Breaking News: Sports fan expressed a ridiculous opinion.

Yup. That’s the headline this morning, after the Orioles dropped a game 6-5 to the New York Yankees. Tommy went boom to give up a 4-2 lead, and the Orioles squandered a subsequent bases loaded opportunity. Yankees’ $36MM man, Andrew Miller, came in for the six-out save to twist the dagger.

The Orioles fell to 3-4 on the young season, and the bullpen, which has been a strength of this team in the Buck Showalter era, has looked very vulnerable.

But let’s not talk about that. Instead, let’s focus on some guy in right field seats who stood up, in protest of Alex Rodriguez during the third baseman’s at bats.

This dude is refusing to watch A-Rod’s at bats: pic.twitter.com/12QGRaKAzs

— Tim Anderson (@TimmyWade94) April 13, 2015

This guy doesn’t respect Alex Rodriguez because of his repeated use of performance enhancing drugs, which is magnified by the fact that Rodriguez is approaching some numbers currently held by all time greats. I get that this is a pretty stupid stance. Scratch that, it’s really stupid I don’t like Rodriguez either, but he’s given us so many better reasons than this. Yes, I get that the Orioles have had their share of PED users. I get that this is a silly display of fandom. But really? It’s harmless. Some guy stood up and said “harrumph” when Alex Rodriguez came to bat. The only victims here are the people whose view he obstructed.

The rest of us need to chill out. How many silly displays of fandom have you seen at a game? This one doesn’t rate for me. Not anywhere near the top. And it certainly doesn’t seem to match the social media outrage and attention. Sorry, Twitter, even though I don’t agree with Harrumph Guy, I’m not going to hop on the public shaming bus.

But it’s not just idiots like you and me arguing about it on Twitter. What did Craig Calcaterra, who constantly bemoans the slipping quality and standards of sports journalism have to say on the subject?

Oh. Right. Some guy we don’t know is a “jackwagon.” NBC says so. The situation requires no more context than the image we saw on Twitter. It’s impossible that Harrumph Guy and the people around him (like the couple of people that joined in) were having some fun with it at a baseball game.  This “attention seeking blowhard” (again, according to NBC) should be mocked mercilessly, especially since the Washington Post sought him out to interview him (seemingly because the paper has nothing better to do).

He’s got an opinion, and yup, it’s dumb.  But c’mon, guys, we’re better than this. Leave Harrumph Guy alone.