Rams Outing: It’s a Matter of Survival

Not long ago I shelled out 23 bucks a pop for four tickets to a Rams game.

Believe me, a bus driver’s salary doesn’t stretch that far, but hey, my family deserved it.

Billy, my youngest, cleaned his room every day for a month before the game. Mary, my daughter, made all A’s last quarter.

My wife has been crying for us to get out and do something together.

We decided on a Rams game. It would be a first for all of us.

We found it to be most interesting.

First of all, none of us expected the strip search at Anaheim Stadium’s front gate.

Some security guys were looking for weapons.

“This is an NFL game, you know,” the guy said.

No, I really didn’t.

Billy, 11, had left a water pistol in his front pocket. His mistake. Four officers surrounded him with guns, all cocked and aimed at his head.

We laughed about it later.

“Can’t be too careful at a Rams game,” the cop told Billy.

Billy was pretty shook up, so I bought him an Eric Dickerson bobble-head doll.

We could hardly wait for the game to start, but during the national anthem these two guys came rolling down our aisle just kicking and beating the you-know-what out of each other.

It was awful. My wife covered Mary’s eyes, but the two were headed right for our seats.

They crashed their heads into the concrete right at our feet. Had I lighted a match near their mouths, the place would have gone up in flames.

Five security officers broke up the fight and carted the guys away, which was nice. It cleared our view to the field.

My wife took Billy to the restroom to wash off the blood that had splattered on his new shirt.

I told them that if they hurried back, they might still see the kickoff.

I was wrong. They did, though, return in time to see what happens when a 250-pound linebacker’s forearm cracks a 180-pound receiver across the face when the referees aren’t looking.

The little guy lay motionless on the field. They set his neck in a brace and carried him off the field on a stretcher.

Everyone cheered, so we joined in.

The game was moving along slowly, I thought.

We all agreed that Dickerson was a great running back.

Midway in the second quarter, Billy nudged my side.

“Daddy,” he said. “Why is that one man wearing a suit of armor?”

Billy was right. It was a guy on the Rams’ sideline.

I went up to check it out with an usher.

“That’s the head coach,” the usher told me. “Standard procedure. Most of the coaches that come in here just wear a flak jacket, but we couldn’t find one big enough to fit John Robinson. Just relax and enjoy the game.”

I asked him if it was serious.

“Nah,” the guy said. “Just some kook in the upper deck who thinks he’s Rambo. I still don’t know how he got all that ammo through the gate.”

I asked if it was safe to stand up and cheer. He recommended that the wife and kids lay low until they found the creep.

And what if we wanted a hot dog?

“What row are y’all in,” he said. “I’ll roll a few down the aisle.”

He convinced me we were safe. He said the guy who sold us four ice cream sandwiches in the first quarter was actually a CIA man named Jenkins.

He told me one of those sandwiches was a .357 Magnum.

He said the FBI had control of the View Level and pointed to a G-man selling pennants in the corner of the upper deck.

I felt a whole lot better about the day.

I went back to my seat and found an obnoxious man leering and cursing at my wife.

He was one of those guys that never wears a shirt at a game but always should. His gut hung like whale blubber over his belt. He was an extraordinary talent, though, being able to simultaneously sway, belch, curse and guzzle a beer.

“I don’t give a bleepity-bleep how old the kid is,” he slurred at my wife as beer dribbled down his beard. “I want him to take the bleepity-bleeping hat off.”

I stepped in to learn that this lard wasn’t a hometown fan and wanted Billy to take off his Rams cap.

“Bleep the bleeping Rams,” he said. “And bleep you too, mister.”

I told Billy to take off the cap. He cried, but he did it.

The halftime show was great, a salute to American war heroes, the whole thing sponsored by some beer company.

The second half was exciting. A SWAT team rescued a drunken man who had threatened to do a swan dive from the club to the field level.

In the fourth quarter alone we counted, as a family, 35 fans who were beaten, bloodied, handcuffed and arrested.

During one beer-throwing, blood-letting melee in our section, I tucked a kid under each arm and we somehow escaped, unharmed, up the aisle.

We weren’t even that upset to find that the tires on our family wagon had been slit in the parking lot.

We were, after all, safe.

Later, Billy asked me the score of the game.

Funny, I didn’t remember.