No matter how bad the Orioles are going, Camden Yards is still the greatest place to watch a ballgame.
Yet even in this baseball nirvana, there are fans who need to be schooled on ballpark etiquette.
After attending a recent game and sitting with the teeming masses, here are a few observations:
• I realize that railing against cell phone use at the ballpark is like trying to hold back the ocean. But I spent two innings listening to the guy behind me blab about all the cool features on his iPhone.
I thought I was in an Apple store. And that next we'd be turning our attention to the MacBook Pro.
Is there an app that can make people like that go away?
• First-time visitors: Welcome to Baltimore. Nice to see you enjoying our ballpark. But do you really have to take that group photo to commemorate the occasion while the game's going on?
Can't it at least wait until the inning's over?
Four smiling people standing in front of you with their arms around each other while another person fiddles with a camera and whines, "I don't know how this thing works" — think that can get a little annoying while you're trying to watch a game?
• This should not need repeating, but apparently it does: No one over the age of 9 should ever bring a glove to the ballpark. If you're 40 and bringing your glove, you need to re-examine your life.
• If you catch a foul ball, give it to a little kid. This is nonnegotiable. If a little kid has a shot at catching a foul ball -- assuming it's not a missile that's going to kill him -- and you snatch it away, you should be beaten with sticks.
• Oh, and if a player flips a ball to a kid in the stands and you pick it off and keep it? That's when we bring back the stockades.
• Is there a place worse than hell? I ask because if a player flips a ball to a kid in the stands and you pick it off and keep it, you're going to that worse place.
• On a related note to dads: Never be so eager to catch a foul ball that you literally drop your young daughter, as a Los Angeles Dodgers fan memorably did last week.
Dude, it's only a baseball. Whereas she's the living, breathing love of your life. Let's keep things in perspective here.
(By the way, that incident at the Dodgers game became a Youtube sensation. It's hilarious. But only because the little girl didn't get hurt when her dad dropped her like a hot casserole dish to lunge for the ball.)
• A word or two about home runs hit by the opposing team. There is a movement at Camden Yards to pressure fans in the stands to throw those balls back.
Why? Beats me. That's not an Orioles fan tradition. That's a Chicago Cubs fan tradition. It belongs at Wrigley Field and no where else.
Other fans who do it look bush league and derivative.
• Ballpark fashion is a matter of individual taste — or lack thereof, in many cases. But if the Orioles are at home against the Toronto Blue Jays, what's the point of showing up in, say, a Philadelphia Phillies jersey?
What's the statement you're trying to make there?
That, like Switzerland, you're neutral?
That you'd secretly rather be at Citizens Bank Park in Philly, but you couldn't get a ticket, so you showed up at a lousy Orioles game?
• About the ketchup-mustard-relish race on the scoreboard. I have never understood why fans get so excited about this.
Maybe it's a generational thing. Or maybe you need six Budweisers under your belt to truly appreciate it.
But when the race is over, does it really have to be dissected endlessly?
C'mon, this isn'tShackleford edgingAnimal Kingdom at the Preakness. It's just three little hot-dog-and-condiment figures.
Let it go.
• No matter how silly it looks, waving at the TV cameras never seems to get old to a certain segment of fans.
They wave and they wave and they wave. Even if the camera isn't on them, they wave, hoping the camera will be on them soon.
Some, the hard-core serial wavers, start in the first inning and don't stop until the ninth. You'd think this would get boring after a while. But apparently it doesn't. No, they just keep smiling and waving, smiling and waving, like a politician at the July 4th parade.
At some point, if you sit behind these nonstop wavers, you'll want to strangle them.
But then the beer man arrives and you have another, and the serial wavers stop being quite so annoying.
As do the ketchup-mustard-relish racers.
Listen to Kevin Cowherd from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays with Jerry Coleman on V1370 AM Sports.