I play for a softball team in a local rec league. The league is more casual, although it can get fairly competitive at times. All the teams in the league except ours are sponsored by local bars, ours is un-sponsored (because when we started it we were all too young to go to bars and we haven’t gotter around to finding a sponsor since becoming legal drinkers). For this season we still like to go out after our games, and we usually go to various local bars.
My question is whether it is bad sportsmanship for us to show up at other teams’ bars, especially if we beat the team or if the game became heated or anything like that. I personally think it is kind of like rubbing it in, especailly if you beat them badly. Other guys on the team don’t even think twice about this. What does everyone here think of this?
For the record, we don’t purposefully decide to go to the bars because they sponsor teams we play. Usually the guys chosing where we will go don’t even think about it. Usually they will chose a place because they may know a bartender or something like that, and I will be the one to remind them that we just demolished the team that will be there too. Then my teammates will act like I’m crazy for suggesting we go somewhere else.
It does sound to be in bad taste. If no one can agree on a different bar and you do go to the bar of the losing team, you try not to talk about the game and possibly stay away from the other players. They may have taken the game more serious than you and now they’ve had some drinks and are upset. Could lead to a “situation”.
I say leave the feelings at the field. Feel free to go where ever you like.
But no taunting… especially if you’ve won.
If they received some bad calls from the umpire, then that’s part of the game.
Shoot… buy 'em a pitcher. No hard feelings. right?
For a casual league? Absolutely no problems at all.
My brother plays ball Thursday nights. His team’s biggest rivals not only go to the same bar afterwards, they buy each other pitchers - and that sentiment goes for the rest of the teams in the league.
OTOH…in his Thursday night league, if team A is pounding team B into the ground, team A will start batting left-handed to even it out and make the game last longer than three or five innings.
Your teammates act like your crazy because they don’t want to look like they think going to the same bar as the other team is a bad idea - but it’s only a bad idea if there was some serious bad blood between you and the other team. And since it’s a rec league, I’m guessing this doesn’t happen often. If you feel it might be tough in the bar with the other team, do what GrizzRich said and just buy them a pitcher. Fun for all.
GrizzRich said what I was going to say. Go where you want…if it seems like they might be bothered (for whatever reason…bad call…bad loss…) then buy some drinks.
Thanks for the replies. I can see now that I was proably going a little overboard in trying to steer clear of the other teams after we played or beat them. I will probably still try to get the guys to avoid showing up other teams’ sponsors if the games became heated at all (which does happen from time to time), but in general I’ll probably feel better about going to the same places if there isn’t any bad blood. This whole thing won’t matter much next year because we will have a sponsor ourselves then.