Some years back, i went to a July 4 game in Yankee Stadium. They were playing my team, the Orioles.
It was a see-saw game, with the Yankees taking a big early lead, Baltimore coming back to take the lead in the middle innings, and then the Yankees winning it with a big innings towards the end. I cheered loudly when the Orioles were putting runs on the board, and when they took the lead. No-one gave me any hassle at all.
About the only time i’ve ever seen any real hostility or potential for a fight in a baseball stadium was at Shea Stadium. I was there with a friend to see a game between the Mets and the Phillies. Two guys near us began abusing each other, hurling insults about mothers and stuff like that, and then standing up and looking like they were about to get into it. Everyone around them told them to sit down and shut up.
What made the whole thing even stranger is that it was a Yankees fan and a Red Sox fan.
Ah, misuse of statistics to demonstrate most dangerous.
The most dangerous places for opposing teams fans are so goddamn dangerous that only a very small percentage of opposing team fans will go there, which helps keep criminal, beating, arrest and related violent statistics low.
Quite frankly, if you know what you’re talking about, you’ll list L.A and San Fran and Philly for Dallas and maybe Philly for NYG.
Being the most dangerous city/stadium for opposing fans is a deterent that lowers the statistics.
If Philly is lethal to Cowboy fans, that keeps many Cowboy fans away and/or modifies Cowboy fan behavior (less flashy if they show, more careful about seats, etc) which prevents the stats from bearing out how dangerous it is.
I am going to vote for anybody visiting the Raiders. I covered some of their home games for a couple of seasons back in the day. It was not a friendly place.
I have been in the following situations, wearing at least one item with my team’s logo in each case:
Red Sox fan at the old Yankee Stadium for a Sox/Yanks game. The Red Sox won.
Steelers fan at Browns Stadium for a Steelers/Browns game. The Steelers won.
I survived both of these visits unscathed. Lots of good-natured ribbing from the Yankee fans, which is also what happened the few times I attended the flip side (Sox vs. Yanks in Boston).
The Cleveland Browns fans were a bit scarier, mostly fueled by alcohol, but nothing horrible. They must have been used to their team constantly losing.
I’ve worn my full Royals-fan regalia to Royals-Yankees games in the Bronx, and have never been mistreated by Yankee fans. Of course, until last year, the Royals weren’t seen by Yankee fans as real competition (not for a few decades, at least), so my experience might have been different than that of other opposing fans.
Hard to say the most dangerous stadium, but I can tell you the safest: Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska. Husker fans are unbelievably nice, and will chat happily with opposing fans. If they lose, they’ll still smile and say, “That was a great game, wasn’t it?”
That surprises me. I used to work for an Englishman who was a West Ham supporter; nice, soft-spoken, the furthest thing from a football hooligan that you can imagine.
Millwall have a terrible reputation and that reputation in itself can attract the wrong sort of person, but the club is one of London’s smallest professional clubs , so they’re fairly small time.
Rangers in Glasgow also have a bad reputation and the Rangers-Celtic rivalry is one of the biggest and most bitter rivalries in sport. They also have a reputation for exporting protestant sectarianism from NI.
Chelsea in London had a bad reputation in the past and in the mid-90s C-18 an ultra-violent and ultra-racist skinhead group infiltrated their fans. Nowadays I think a lot of the worst elements have been priced out of regular attendance at Chelsea.
Cardiff City in Wales in my personal experience are the worse, whenever they came to town there would be fights and bars being smashed up and I know from people visiting their stadium they needed more police protection than normal.
I’m sure that’s true, it was just my first (and so far, only) impression on the subject. I figured most of the English football clubs drew their fans from the area where they’re based. I knew one pleasant, relaxed guy from West Ham, so West Ham must be a pleasant, relaxed area filled with pleasant, relaxed people. I thought if I’m ever in London I might even try to go to a match.
But who knows? Maybe in his youth Reg was a lot more rough-and-tumble than I realize.
I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend you go to a London match if you can get tickets. The atmosphere is usually great, and incidents of trouble aren’t anything like they used to be 15-20 years ago. There’s usually a good police / steward prescence at big matches anyway, especially in today’s world
I’d be wary of Reg as well. Anyone called Reg is bound to be a bit of a dodgy geezer
If you do go, enjoy yourself. Just steer clear of the hot dogs and meat pies.
Sports fandoms, and how we choose them, can be odd things. West Ham is the only British club I have even the most tenuous connection to.
And Reg was a good guy; son of a publican, Masters from Pepperdine, did quite well for himself in software, and was a great boss. Come to think of it, I’m not certain he was from West Ham, just that they were his favorite club.
And actually, this may be the place to ask a question I’ve always wondered about, is “Ham” short for anything (“Hampshire”, “Hampstead”,…) or is it just “West Ham”?
Just West Ham as far as I know. It’s an area of east London. I know that as a suffix in British place names it just means something like “place” as in Birmingham, Nottingham, probably Tottenham as well come to think of it. No idea why it didn’t become Westham.
Hmm. Think I’ll go and do a bit of Googling. Cheers, you’ve given me something more interesting to do than watch bollocks on the telly while I pop painkillers. F’ing prostatitis… grrrrr.
