In his regular column for The Observer-Reporter.com, sportswriter John Steigerwald wrote about the savage attack on San Francisco Giant's fan, Bryan Stow, by two thugs at the April 1st Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium in LA between the Giants and Dodgers. Stow, a 42 year-old paramedic from Santa Cruz, Ca. was so severely beaten in the stadium parking lot after the game that he had to placed in a medically induced coma in an LA area hospital with a fractured skull and serious brain injuries. The apparent cause for inducing the beating was the fact that Stow had the audacity to wear a SF Giants jersey on Dodger turf.
After giving some background on the attack in the article titled, Know When You've Outgrown the Uniform, Steigerwald apparently loses his mind. In an effort to explain how these things happen, Steigerwald actually takes STOW to task for wearing an opponents jersey on "enemy turf". Yes, he uses the "blame the victim scenario" to rationalize the attack. Here's the paragraph that became my WTF?! moment:
"Maybe someone can ask Stow, if he ever comes out of his coma, why he thought it was a good idea to wear Giants' gear to a Dodger's home opener when there was a history of out-of-control drunkenness and arrests at the event that date back several years."
This is the same rational that morons apply to rape victims who asked for it because they dressed provocatively.
As if this were not distasteful enough, Stegerwald goes further to disparage Stow by asking: "Are the 42 year-olds who find it necessary to wear their replica jerseys to a road game, those kids are now fathers who haven't grown up? Are there really 40-something men who think that wearing the jersey makes them part of the team? It was cute when a 10 year-old kid got that feeling by showing up at Three Rivers Stadium in a Pirates jersey, but when did little boys stop growing out of that?"
How clueless is this guy?! First, he blames the victim for inciting his own destruction. Then he misses the entire point of why people attend live sporting events in the first place, especially with their children. It provides most people with a few hours of diversion where they can, yes, BE A KID AGAIN! And this often involves wearing team journeys. Harmless. At least IT SHOULD BE.
The readers' response to the column was so swift and negative that the IP provider removed it from the site.
So, for his totally insensitive and inaccurate take on a violent and regrettable incident, John Steigerwald is today's Douche of the Day.
The need to belong to something gone wild.
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