Even the Rays Have Annoying Fans

It was a complete joke the way TBS lost its coverage last night. As a packed throng at Professor Thom's was waiting for the coverage to begin at 8 PM, TBS was on the screens and what did we see? "The Steve Harvey Show." What the hell was going on? I kiddingly turned to one of my friends and said,"There can't be a rain delay, it's in a dome."

Another friend told me moments later that TBS lost its coverage due to some malfunction. But as we looked at the TVs, there was no crawl across the screen letting the world know what was going on. Finally, about five minutes in, they put up a crawl about the problem. (At least NESN, which had the Bruins game on one of the other TVs, had a batter-by-batter update as to what was going on in Tampa.)

My pal Chris signaled over to me and I grabbed my radio/cassette recorder, and we plugged it into the bar's sound system. (Yours Truly to the rescue!) We had trouble getting it going, but eventually we did hear Jon Miller on ESPN Radio. And we heard Upton's home run off Beckett, and finally, 21 minutes after the start of the game, we saw Carlos Pena walk, and the bar burst into applause.

Another friend of mine compared what happened to the infamous "Heidi" Jets-Raiders game of 1968. Turns out that it was some kind of routing problem with TBS in Atlanta. It's an absolutely inexcusable thing to have happen. And they did an extremely poor job of keeping fans informed of exactly what was going on, both on the field and with the technical problem. It made me long for the broadcasts of, dare I say it, Fox.

And also at Thom's last night, we were subjected to an extremely idiotic Rays fan who said he was from Florida wearing a Rays hat. This guy and a couple of his buddies were extraordinarily annoying, saying rude things about the Sox and yelling "Let's Go Rays" all night long. When it got to a point of yelling obscene things I had enough and pointedly said, "There are 10,000 bars in New York where you can watch this game with no Red Sox fans around. You just come in here to annoy us?" (And why anyone would want to be in place like this where you're outnumbered 100-1 just to make a complete ass of yourself is beyond me.)

The dimwit muttered something about "this being America" and I turned my back on him and moved away slightly (I was in no mood for fights). My pal Chris warned him about his behavior and had security at the ready to toss this nitwit out. He seemed to calm down just so slightly.

Listen, I have no problem with opposition fans at Thom's watching games with us. I have even with Yankee fans who acted very appropriately and just enjoyed the game. But this guy was beyond obnoxious, even talking trash about his own team when they screwed up.

And funny, when Jonathan Papelbon got the last out and Thom's was celebrating, the Obnoxious Rays Fan was nowhere to be found. Let's hope he annoys people in another bar somewhere far away tonight.