Sports Fans (Bleep)!

It is harder than ever to enjoy a sports event in America these days, even if you’re not there in person.

Take Game 1 of baseball’s National League Championship Series. It’s the bottom of the fifth inning. The Los Angeles Dodgers trail the Philadelphia Phillies 5-1, but the Dodgers have a rally brewing: Runners on 1st and 3rd, 1 out, and Andre Ethier, one of the team’s best hitters, at the plate.

The sellout crowd of 56,000 at Dodger Stadium begins to chant.

They’re not chanting, "We Want A Hit." I guess that would be too 1970s of them.

And they’re not chanting, "Let’s Go Dod-gers!"

Instead, the chant I hear with unmistakable clarity from my television set is, "Phil-lies Suck! Phil-lies Suck!"

Such creepiness, such classless behavior from antisocial sports fans has, unfortunately, become the norm rather than the exception.

I live in New York and often attend baseball games at Yankee Stadium, where I am more likely to hear "Boston Sucks!" (even if the Red Sox are not the visiting team) than a chant of encouragement for the Yankees.

Whenever an opposing team’s player hits a home run at Yankee Stadium, boorish fans begin yelling, "Throw it back!"

The supposed logic behind this is a home run ball hit by the "enemy" is not worth keeping. Chicago Cubs fans at Wrigley Field began this strange ritual many years ago.

Those Cubs fans are known as "Bleacher Bums." But those Bums are Boy Scouts compared to what I’ve seen at Yankee Stadium.

One fan I saw at Yankee Stadium caught an "enemy" home run ball and didn’t want to throw it back onto the field. He gave the ball to his son.

"It’s my son’s first game," the father said proudly.

"Ass-hole! Ass-hole!" the fans chanted.

"Throw the fuckin’ ball back!" one guy yelled. "Buy him a fuckin’ ball!"

"Ass-hole! Ass-hole!" the chant continued.

The boy, who looked to be about six, began to cry. The father said something to his son. Then they got up and left the section.

The obscene chant followed father and son all the way to the exit.

When you can’t give your son a baseball you caught during a game without being aurally assaulted by people seated around you, something is wrong.

When you need to cover your child’s ears, or your own, because 50,000 people are chanting, "Bull-shit! Bull-shit!" in response to a call, something is wrong.

At a sports event, you are more likely to hear negative chants than positive ones. You are more likely to see antisocial behavior than good behavior.

And the American media, of which I am a part, actually encourages this.

While watching a sports event on television, think about how often you see people with angry, contorted faces screaming into the camera — often, these are young men with faces painted and shirts off.

Television has provided a forum, and a stamp of approval, to these louts, while, unconscionably, encouraging fans in other cities to act the same way, because acting like a jerk is how you get on television.

Foul-mouthed, foul-smelling people whom you would never want seated next to you on a bus or train are the people we’ve become accustomed to seeing in close-ups on televised sports events.

At halftime of New York Jets football games, young female fans were encouraged by male louts to go topless in the concourse.

Many women compiled. Police finally put an end to this odious display last year.

Now it is time to put an end to oligarchy. Mobs should not rule at sports events.

Here are three solutions:

(1) TV sports directors must stop putting the most brain-addled, antisocial fans on camera during events. Bob Fishman of CBS Sports is one director who doesn’t. His peers should follow his example.

(2) Tickets should be confiscated from fans who behave obscenely at events. Such language should be printed on the backs of tickets, and a public address announcement should precede each event. Granted, what constitutes obscene behavior is subject to different interpretations. But here’s my rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t want someone to do it or say it in your home, then you shouldn’t do it or say it in at a public event, particularly one attended by children.

(3) There should be family-friendly sections at all sports events; an island of civility must exist amid what has often become a public cesspool.

Attending a sports event used to be a welcome diversion from the pressure and stress of everyday life.

No more. Now, it has become yet another example of how life in America has changed for the worse.