A 21-year-old college student is dead in Boston. Why?
To quote this article further:
You all suck for taking an amazing event of beauty and teamwork and using it as an excuse to act out your basest animal aggressions.
I never want to hear you bitch and moan about the Yankees ever again.
And just so you know, I was there in 1986, when the majority of you were probably still in diapers. I am a real Red Sox fan. You are thugs.
All fans born after 1986 aren’t real fans? Thats a pretty retarded thing to say.
It would have been, but I think the OP was saying “you” to the particular post-1986ers who made destructive vandals of themselves.
Dammit that’s not what I meant. Gah.
My little cousins born in the 1990s are bigger fans than me, for the record.
I mean these schmucks are not real fans. I was just mentioning 1986 to say why it pains me so to have to write a pit thread after an amazing event.
Argh…post delay.
Yes, what Kimstu said. Thank you.
I didn’t mean what tries said.
I clearly should have got more sleep last night. :smack:
It has nothing at all to do with the Sox: this country has a long and proud history of utterly pointless post-win riots after sporting events.
I recall being in Pittsburgh after one of the Steeler’s Super Bowl thumpings of Dallas in the '70s. Every personin the area between the ages of 15 and 25 flooded into downtown; after standing around for a while, a few of them decided that was too boring and started throwing bottles at the police, at which point the cops let loose a horde of dogs and baton-swinging riot squads, and all hell broke loose. Cars turned over, trash bins set ablaze, the usual. Some friends and I who had gone downtown basically only because everyone else had, ended up running down a street with police dogs nipping at our heels and wondering, “What the fuck are we doing here, anyway?”
When the weekend was over, I went home to Johnstown to find that my beloved, mint-condition '68 Lincoln Continental, which I had left parked at my place, had been totaled by some drunken yahoo who ran into it late on the night of the game. Poetic justice, I guess.
Sorry; you were saying?
This is what gets me curious. Why does it happen again and again? Now I may be a dull person (may be, hah!), but this never held any appeal for me.
Anyone want to clue me in?
This is exactly why I always cheer for whoever’s playing against the Raiders. Because if the Raiders make it to the playoffs, there’s gonna be a riot. I don’t like riots, especially in my neighborhood, therefore the Raiders must lose. Luckily, the voodoo spell I cast this year seems to be working. 
I do not, however, recall any rioting or car-burning in **New York ** after any sports team victories. I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.
Probably because we’re so jaded towards winning. 
I think the authorities may be partly to blame for allowing this to happen. I recall hearing about a university town that had riots every year after midterms. One year, the police got wize and removed everything from downtown that could be set on fire, broken, or overturned. Then they kept a low profile - all plainclothes, no uniforms. The result: no riot.
I know this probably is an unsatisfactory answer, but it’s just something large, drunken crowds tend to do.
I think part of has to do with being both anonymous and highly visible at the same time, part of it has to do with the assumption that there are too many people around to make it likely to get caught for carryiong out a destructive act, and part of it is the presence of authority figures (riot cops) who often are attired in a way that makes them look more like robots than humans.
Much of it, I think is that many people, as Nick Lowe once sang, “love the sound of breaking glass”.
I’ll cut out the amateur psychology now.
Or possibly because it would take a really huge sports riot to be noticed above the background levels of assault, arson and murder. Just kidding.
New York does seem to avoid these things better than other cities. It may be because fans are more jaded, but that doesn’t explain the ones in the stadium. It may be the police force–other cities have good, professional cops too, but they may not live with the everyday expectation of things suddenly turning bad. It may simply be that the city is big and diverse and crowded enough that no matter how big your mob is, you don’t have the expectation that everybody you can see is on your side. Or people may simply be a little lazy. Why destroy the city when there are plenty of other people around who are apt to do it for you? I tell you, this “I’m not going to get involved” mentality might just have an upside.
Student killed during postgame celebration
Sad.
You pretty muched nailed it. The fairly self explanitory name for the process is deindividuation. People in big crowds lose their idenities, and often their inhibitions. I think it’s a pretty implicit process.
Pardon typing and grammar, I’m all broken up over the Boston winning. 
I remember some riots after the 86 Mets. There were some localized ones after the Rangers Stanley Cup win, too, weren’t there? (Though that may just be faulty memory.)
Nothing I can recall.
When the Phillies won the series back in 1980, there wasn’t any craziness that I remember, but the same can’t be said for the early Flyers victories in the mid 70s.
Mebbe I’m weird, but I never thought ‘O Boy! My team won. I’m soo happy, I could just go break up a bunch of shit, start fires and be an asshole.’ :rolleyes:
Or 'cause that’s par for the course in Queens and the Bronx.
Stuff like that would never, ever happen in my beloved Brooklyn ,
(I reserve the right to change my stance after the new basketball stadium is built near Flatbush…).
Ava