The Drunk Jays Fans Guide To The 2009 Home Opener

So, we’re a few days away from opening day, and I figured I’d give you all the weekend to properly prepare yourselves for Monday night. After all, it’s been a long offseason, made even longer by the lack of movement in the Jays roster.

We’ll have the next few months to gripe and groan over disappointing baseball. For this coming weekend, we should focus on opening day, and the delusional hope that creeps inside even the most cynical of fucks, finding entrances wherever it can, getting right up inside you, squirming around, boring through your mind, through your tummy, through your anus.

Which brings us to our first point.

Get Excited

In all likelihood, this season is going to be a wash. Take advantage of the fact that the Jays get to start the year at .500 in a tie for the lead in their division. Outside of the first week, the chance may not come again.

For some of us, there isn’t much more to live for than sitting on a hard plastic chair with a cold beer in hand, watching pitchers from the stretch, listening to the crack of a bat and telling the racial minority in front of you to simmer down after they stand up and shout for every single motherfucking routine fly ball as though it’s a home run.

As the Danimal, drunk as skull, said a couple of home openers back, “You can go to a bar with a field, or you can go to a bar.” I’m not sure what he meant either, but I’m fairly confident that it best encapsulates how you should treat your team’s first home game of the year.

Pre/Post Game Libation

If you weren’t already aware, there’s a little brewery just South East of the Rogers Centre, across Bremner Boulevard. If you play your cards right you can score a couple of free drinks while you mull over going on the brewery tour.

Don’t bother with the tour, but do bother with picking up six beers, walking around to the nearby park and discreetly drinking some bottles of Sprite. Please, for everyone’s sake, discretion is key.

Speaking of discretion, I tend to avoid the whole 500 people get-togethers with matching T-shirts that have a play on words with BJs. It’s kind of lame, and I really hate that group mentality affecting individuals where they start saying/doing things they’d never normally have the balls for.

Instead, after the game, I’m more inclined to journey down to a little bar on Wellington and enjoy a celebratory Caesar with a pickled bean and some serious hot sauce. The burning mouth rids the stale aftertaste of the ten beers you drank at the stadium.

Don’t Be Total Douches To Ushers

Let’s be honest, you’re probably going to be incoherently drunk by the third inning. Pretending otherwise is about as effective as hoping that teaching abstinence will curb teenage pregnancy.

However, your fortification doesn’t mean you have to be a total douche to the usher who asks you not to stand up on your seat and holler at Nate Robertson to “take off his fucking cum shields and shave his faggoty ginger facial hair” in front of the two six year olds sitting in the row behind you.

Yes, a minority of the ushers and usherettes (purrlo!) are total power trippin’ cunts and cuntettes, but the majority are fans just like us. They’re already going to have to tolerate a shitload of Tigers fans who are getting drunk for the very first time. Don’t be a shit in their cut.

Avoid Physical Confrontation

I know what you’re thinking. Pacifism is for pussies. Well, you’re wrong meathead.

Are you seriously in kindergarten or are you just not clever enough to think up derogatory comments to solve confrontations.

On the whole, Tigers fans don’t act as annoyingly entitled as Red Sox fans, but I’m sure there will be a share of dickheads getting wasted and trying to explain that if Miguel Cabrera retired today he’d be a Hall of Famer.

It wouldn’t surprise me for one instant if at some point on Monday night, you’ll get Matt Stairs eyes over some douche bag in a Verlander jersey calling you out, and you’re going to want to punch him in the friggin’ throat.

Steady. Hold. Steady. Unless he’s insulting your girlfriend, mother or sister, stay calm. Call him out for being a fucking caveman from Detroit. Let him know that you could probably afford all of his city’s downtown core with your next pay cheque. Bring up Dontrelle Willis. Fuck, mention Joel Zumaya.

Although, if you have to fight, try to avoid fighting a guy in the row behind you. That one level of elevation can make a huge difference.

The Field Is For The Players

Yo, it's actually not cool to run onto the field during the game.

But if you really didn't get enough attention as a child and you enjoy getting it in the most ill-advised ways possible, don't be half-assed about it, take off ALL your clothes . . . and can you please be an incredibly attractive hot chick, and not a frumpy whale.

Read The Drunk Jays Fans Guides

Look, it’s likely been at least six months since you were at your last game. Even the best of us will be a little bit rusty. Fortunately, we’ve got you covered.

Check out the frame to the right of this post. You should find all the information you need to start your baseball season on the right foot.

Skip the guide to sneaking down because even the mightiest DJF can’t pull that shit at the home opener, and the reading guide was done soberly and ill advisedly . . . and the interweb guide isn’t really all that relevant . . . but the rest, yeah, the rest will tell you all you need to know from where to park your car, what beer to buy, what to do when you catch a foul ball and what to do with your foul balls.

However, for your benefit, I’ll give you a quick do / don't summary:

Do think before you wave, do park on Front St. West of the Dome, do get off at Bremner on the Spadina Street Car, don’t use a glove to catch a foul ball, do give foul balls to a nearby kid, don’t lose your shit for a free T-shirt, don’t buy beer from the Harry Potter-looking tallboy peddler, do buy your program from the Falling Down dude wearing shorts with semen stains, and finally, do use the exit ramps near section 108 or section 135 to get the fuck out of there.

Read it, learn it and love it.

Finally

Don’t you dare fucking pass out!