My mind races. I can feel the fear rising up in me as he nervously inches towards me. This short slightly overweight goofy looking guy in glasses is making a beeline right for me. This isn’t right. If I was standing in front of an elevator or a staircase I might understand, but I’m not. I am standing next to the exit to the bathroom at PNC Park and this dorky looking Pirates fan is heading straight for me. Maybe he wants to tell me to go fuck myself because the Nationals just finished taking their first road series since May by outscoring the Pirates 17 to 3 in the last two games, but that isn’t it. When he gets to me he asks me where I am from. I want to tell him I am from where he thinks I am from. How many fucking Nats fans aren’t from the DC area? I really just want to tell him to fuck off, but I answer his question honestly but tersely.
Obviously he doesn’t get the message as he has follow up questions. He asks if I am in town for the whole weekend. The fact that it is Sunday afternoon should give that one away, and I don’t know how to answer this retard. I simply tell him no I am leaving when my friend gets through desecrating a stall at PNC Park. I actually leave that last part off and just tell him no. He of course has more questions and comments. I really want this to end. I have no idea why this guy is talking to me. Do I look interesting or interested? He keeps going though. He tells me that Zimmerman made a good play at third. My response is, “I know.” Zimmerman does do it all the time after all. He is the best defensive third baseman in baseball. Lucky for me I see my friend exit the bathroom and with no further words I am gone. I look back briefly and sad lonely eyes are following me. I feel no remorse I fucking hate strangers and I hate it more when they talk to me.
This instance of a stranger talking to me is nothing new. It has happened in nearly every city I have travelled to this year to watch baseball. From a Nats fan in Ohio telling me his life story and why he is a Nats fan to a guy in Philly wanting to stop me so he could chat about Strasburg’s injury and Jim Riggleman’s handling of pitchers. It happened a few other times in Pittsburgh as well. Mostly the topic of conversation is Strasburg and if I think he will come back. Well I know he will come back. The problem is he might break down again or not be the same pitcher, but he will return to the mound and statistics show that he most likely will be the same pitcher.
The topic of conversation here isn’t Strasburg. It is strangers trying to have conversations with me. I don’t know why it happens. Maybe because I am a Nats fan on the road they assume I know something about the Nationals. I do probably know more than most non-diehard Nationals fans, but I don’t think I know that much more than any other Nationals fan. I simply like to travel and like to watch baseball when I travel. It is funny because no stranger tried to talk to me in Chicago or Milwaukee, but that time I was with my Asian friend and maybe they think I am his translator or something and don’t want to start an uncomfortable conversation. Well I got news for you strangers out there; every conversation you start with a stranger is fucking uncomfortable. It is weird to think that at some point in time all my friends and I were strangers, but I met most of them in some form of schooling, and if you think about it your classmates aren’t really strangers.
It is for that reason that I think I would be open to a fellow Nats fan talking to me, but some beady eyed chubby Pirates fan is a no go. Although I have to say when a random pizza delivery guy in Cleveland decided to talk to me it was kind of cool, but he was there and I was there. We were both in the places we were supposed to be going about our daily business and he decided to talk to me. After a minute or two I did want to get away, but it wasn’t the same kind of confusion mixed with fear that I suffered in PNC Park.
The waitress at the Original Oyster Bar kidding us about the Nationals is one thing as is the guy sitting next to us at a bar, but it is an entirely different thing to approach a stranger out of nowhere and start jibber jabbering and trying to make conversation. It isn’t nice or fun to feel trapped. I had to wait for my friend to get out of the bathroom. Looking back right now I just realized I could have just run off to the team store and sent a text message, but I am a much faster thinker in hindsight. At that moment I was trapped in a little corner of PNC Park. A corner where no human being not exiting the bathroom would have a reason to be. Why this little turd felt the need to walk up to and then start talking to me is beyond me. Of course now I also feel bad about calling him a turd. He is probably just some socially awkward guy that feels any fellow baseball fan is a possible friend.
I just dislike people. I dislike crowds. The worst place in the universe to me is the grocery story. I stopped eating cereal because the isle is always too crowded. My wife now does all of the grocery shopping and I can’t be happier. When I do have to go to the store it is always a scary time. People are rushing around me and darting in front of me. One woman was tailgating me the other day with her cart. I stopped to pick up some beer and she almost ran into me. Listen sweetheart it is a grocery store people buy things. They ain’t there to take a stroll through the fucking cheese isle. Also walk how you fucking drive people. Walk to the goddamned right.
I guess the point is it doesn’t really matter where I am in the world I dislike strangers, and I dislike it even more when they approach me for no good reason to have a conversation I am not interested in. I can sit and watch a ballgame in complete silence, lost in deep thoughts and meditation, transfixed by the beauty of the game on the field. The last thing I want is my fortress of solitude to be broken into and have to listen to some guy asking my opinion about many various things. Maybe I should just have a business card made up with various web addresses on it of where my opinions can be read. Of course there is a reason I don’t have many friends and never seem to have fun at social functions, but hey if I cared I wouldn’t be me.
'Til Death Do Us Part 