I wonder if they realize that gangs all across North America wear licensed pro-sports garb, especially team hats, jackets, and numbered jerseys as a show of neighborhood pride and affiliation or membership with certain gangs? These items are NOT worn as a show of fandom for the particular team they are wearing. Apparently it’s an element of gang culture to use team names as acronyms for their neighborhoods and gang names, without any geographic relationship to the actual team location.

Maybe the most notable example of this was the use of White Sox/Raiders/L.A. Kings gear back in the early-90′s — which became so prevalent that if you actually were a fan of any of those teams, your life was likely to be in jeopardy if you were caught wearing their gear in certain neighborhoods.

Ebbets Field was an influence for Tropicana Field. The ballpark’s grand, eight-story-high rotunda entrance is designed from the very blueprints used for the rotunda at Ebbets Field, built in 1913.

eddie, speaking of the Metrodome, I remember from my one visit there that its entrance from street level is also elevated up to the concourse level — what would that be, 3-4 stories? I.e., the field level is sunk below ground level.

Not so the Kingdome, from what I remember. Wasn’t the entrance at field level, and you had to climb, climb, climb those outside ramps to get to any seating level?

In the old days at the Kingdome the general admission bleachers (pretty much everything in the outfield from foul pole to foul pole) were separated from the rest of the higher paying fans. We couldn’t wander into their areas, but they could get into ours (and out again) with their ticket stub.

The Kingdome had a season or two of $3 tickets in “Perry’s Perch” (the 300 level behind homeplate). That was a hefty jump from our usual $1.50 bleacher seats, but with those tickets we could sneak down to the empty sections behind the dugouts to watch the game.

The Everett Aquasox have a boy scout night at the park where the scouts camp on the field after the game (no campfires!). I think they might also have a girl scout night too.

The Blue Jays host an annual sleepover

the Dodgers have done this as well– oh, and Woodland Park Zoo does it too

Jersey girls don’t grow up without learning to apply makeup.

I believe it is State Law.

It was no big deal though, some people laughing at it, some people not really getting it, until the Twins made the world series for the first time and the national press came in and saw the slogan and starting making fun of it…well, the minnesotans couldn’t have that, it’s one thing to have a minnesotan laugh at you but to have a New Yorker laugh at you…so a few days after a few articles came out about it, they covered up the slogan with a big banner or poster or something, again, something that is really typically Minnesotan, and that was the end of that.

It’s right across the river, and Jersey girls don’t grow up without learning to apply makeup. How many of the M’s ballgirls are from the eastside burbs, across the water?

The Blue Jays gang/clothing restriction struck me as useless. I understand the value they seek to protect, but their rule might net only the most obvious offenders. Red or blue bandannas anyone?

I wonder if they realize that gangs all across North America wear licensed pro-sports garb, especially team hats, jackets, and numbered jerseys as a show of neighborhood pride and affiliation or membership with certain gangs? These items are NOT worn as a show of fandom for the particular team they are wearing. Apparently it’s an element of gang culture to use team names as acronyms for their neighborhoods and gang names, without any geographic relationship to the actual team location.

For example, several years ago I attended a presentation given by officers of the Washington, D.C. Southeast Precinct. It’s a fairly violent seciton of DC, and the officers mentioned specifically the use of Dallas Cowboys (no coincidence we were in Redskin country!) paraphernalia as being relevant to some Crip affiliate in New Orleans or Nashville (or some other southern city) where the neighborhood they represented was known as “Blue Star” IIRC.

I know, a trivial point, but I always wonder if the folks that seek to protect the values inherent in the “ballpark experience” by regulating their crowds (much as our beloved home team does) really know how to accomplish what they’re after. Just saying. Now back to lurking.

David