The closest I ever came was at a Cardinals game at Busch Stadium c. 2007. The Cards weren’t playing the Cubs (their biggest rivals, for those who don’t know). Being a Cubs fan, I wore my Cubs shirt anyway. During the game I got some side-eye and some gentle ribbing, but that was the end of it. After the game, though, I was on this side of the tracks waiting for the westbound commuter train to take me back to where I’d parked, and a drunken Cards fan was on that side, waiting to go the other direction. He took quite a bit of umbrage with my sartorial choices and was letting me know, and saying he should kick my ass and all that. Had there not been about a ten-foot gap between us, which included two steep 3-foot stone walls, electric rail tracks, and the possiblity of a commuter train running him over, I think he’d have probably started swinging.
How about you? Ever been stabbed or punched or whatever by a rival fan? Ever been caught up in a riot at a game? Ever thrown batteries at an opposing pitcher?
No, the closest I came was when I moved into my house next to the Milwall stadium in Bermondsey in East London (this was 2003 so after the dark days of British football holiganism but still had a infamous reputation). I grabbed a pint at the local with my new housemate. He mentioned that because the Milwall ground was round the corner you have to be a bit careful, especially on game days. I joked that I won’t wear my Reading top out much then, and he got visibly nervous and looked around, then whispered “don’t even joke about that in this place!”.
I never actually had an problems in the few months I lived there, it was a rough bit of London (not gentrified like it is now) but never saw any fights (unlike Reno Nevada which I moved to just afterwards though they were not sports related AFAIK)
Are/were Milwall supporters known for being particularly lawsless? I read somewhere else where the writer was in a pub, and a couple of Milwall supporters came in (evidence by their shirts, I guess), and the air was immediately sucked out of the room. The writer’s companion made them head for the exits immediately.
Yes absolutely they have a particularly terrible reputation. As I said this was after the dark days of English football holiganism (which reached their nadir in the 1980s) I wouldn’t have been concerned in a pub next to most football grounds, but next to the Milwall ground I was.
I went to a Rome vs Moscow football (soccer) match in Moscow. The foreigner section was ringed by riot police. A Russian guy came in to the section wearing a Rome team scarf, sat down and smashed his beer bottle over the head of an Italian guy watching the game with his kids. The police beat the shit out of the attacker, threw him down the stadium steps to another group of cops who beat the shit out of him some more and dragged him away.
Does overexuberant celebration (what some would call rioting) count? I was in the Mission District, San Francisco in 2014 for the Giants World Series win. One of a few times I’ve been in a crowd dispersed by riot cops, but the only time it was sports-related. I was never personally in any danger, though. And to be clear, my celebrations were not overly exuberant, or particularly exuberant. I don’t even like baseball that much. Watching the celebrations get out of hand was fascinating, though.
Ohio States victory over Michigan at OSU in 1984 was expected, so the cops surrounded the goal post with cops on horseback to deter the crowd from tearing down the goals.
So we went to High Street and got hammered, during which my roommate got a crowd of Buckeye fans riled up enough to march back down to the stadium to tears the goalpost down.
That and the traditional burning of a blue car with a yellow M painted on the side also took place afterwards. Fun times!