GEORGE KIMBALL/America At Large: The Mariners justified their intervention by pointing to their "code of conduct", which is prominently posted in 50 spots around the ballpark.
Thirty-odd years ago the Boston Phoenix, the alternative weekly where I was then working, illustrated a cover story on an anti-war demonstration with a front-page photograph of a girl wearing a tee-shirt, the front of which was embossed with the pithy message: Vietnam Sucks.
We had anticipated the cover might engender some controversy but the only letters of outrage the newspaper received came from a few dogmatic homosexual rights activists who interpreted the message as a slight on their persuasion.
A decade later, when I was working for the Boston Herald and a World Series crowd erupted in a spontaneous chant of "Reggie Sucks!" there was a serious newsroom debate over the question of whether we should print it in the newspaper, even though the chorus had been 50,000-strong and millions of television viewers had heard it.
In the end, we did.
The word in question has at this point become so thoroughly assimilated in the lexicon that in most parts of the country it isn't vaguely controversial. And on one massive sports weekend in Boston a few weeks back, tee-shirt vendors were flogging "Yankees Suck" tee-shirts outside Fenway Park and their "Lakers Suck" cousins down at the FleetCenter, where the Celtics were entertaining the basketball world champions from Los Angeles. That the former outsold the latter by a fairly wide margin is largely attributable to the fact that in New England, or anywhere outside New York for that matter, the Yankees are a pretty easy bunch to despise.
In any case, buoyed by their sales performance in Boston, the vendors apparently decided to test the waters by taking their show on the road. In what might be viewed as test marketing, the inventory of Yankees Suck shirts followed the Bronx Bombers across the country, with fluctuating sales - until they hit Seattle last week.
Despite its reputation as a progressive-minded haven, Seattle can be downright draconian at times. The constabulary in that city, you might recall, used the World Trade Organisation congress there a few years ago as sort of a dry run for last summer's events in Genoa, beating up and hosing down protesters until the local jails wouldn't hold any more.
In that spirit, the ownership of the Seattle Mariners stationed security guards outside Safeco Field last weekend, with express instructions to turn away any patron attempting to enter the ballpark wearing a Yankees Suck shirt. The Mariners claim they were merely attempting to produce an atmosphere of civility, and suggested the message might be offensive to children.
Now, had the ownership of the Boston Red Sox, who own Fenway Park, tried to do the same thing a few weeks earlier they would have met with massive resistance, but they'd at least have been on more solid legal ground.
The problem here is that the Mariners play in a publicly-owned facility constructed with $517 million taxpayer money, and the US Constitution, with its provisions for Freedom of Speech and, for that matter, Freedom of Assembly, still obtains.
Those who were denied admission, or who had their contraband shirts confiscated, have threatened legal action. Mariners officials find themselves in a virtually indefensible position.
"Our staff will proactively intervene to support an environment where guests can enjoy the baseball experience free from the following behaviours," it reads, and goes on to cite a laundry list of unauthorised activities, ranging from "intoxication or other signs of impairment" to "displays of affection not appropriate in a public, family setting", but including "foul/abusive language or obscene gestures" and "obscene or indecent clothing".
Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Laura Vecsey (whose father and uncle happen to work in a similar capacity for newspapers in, ironically, New York) sought the counsel of Stewart Jay, a University of Washington Law School professor whose field of expertise is constitutional law, to interpret the repercussions of what took place at Safeco Field last weekend.
In Jay's view, the actions of Mariners' management were (a) "arbitrary", (b) "stupid", and (c) "almost certainly unconstitutional".
"I think they have a vagueness problem, because the word 'sucks' is certainly not obscene," Jay told Vecsey. "Short of a pornographic image, there is no basis for restricting what kind of words or insignia can be worn." Of course, added Jay, "if it was an entirely private stadium, it would be completely different." In other words: see you in court.
The implications for other sports are fairly far-reaching. Had patrons at last month's Masters tournament, for instance, wore "Monty Sucks" shirts, Augusta National authorities had every right to hustle them right off the grounds, but should the same fellows materialise at next month's US Open at Bethpage (a publicly-owned facility), USGA officials will, or should be, powerless to intervene.
Lawsuit to follow.
