PHILADELPHIA. Tailgating before a Phillies game is not a good idea for anyone wearing a Mets jersey and a Mets cap, as I found out Saturday afternoon treading into the maroon abyss in blue and orange.
Fans were less obnoxious inside Citizens Bank Park, but I attributed that to the 10-0 shellacking the Phillies gave the Mets. Few fights occurred in and around our seats in section 309. Perhaps having a Phillies fan with me kept me from too much torment. The heckling itself was tolerable, even fun, when it came from by a bachelorette party from Torresdale.
But outside the gates prior to the game, with the bad taste of Friday’s 9-1 loss to the Mets still fresh in their dirty mouths, those inside Lot K enjoyed the chance I gave them to use a month’s worth of expletives in one or two sentences.
“Go back to New York, you a—hole,” said one rather unoriginal female tailgater, who I decided not to correct by adding that I’m actually from northern New Jersey. “Get the f— out of here.”
Other Mets fans who showed up — and there was a good amount — all seemed accustomed to the inhospitable confines of CBP.
“People are not nice to us,” New Jersey school teacher Stacy Socha said standing behind Section 133 with her friend Katie Hughes, a Childrens’ Hospital nurse. “They can be pretty bad.”
