Get Around the Horn: Vuvuzelas Begin a Painful Invasion of Baseball

We’re going to take a little step back from baseball for a second this week and talk about something in dire need of irrational, thought-provoking discussion:

It takes a lot to stop the zombie apocalypse, but it is sure as all hell easy to start.

It begins with patient zero, the world’s worst case of “wrong place, wrong time.”  Somehow, he contracts a virus that diseases him, kills him, and reanimates him as a stumbling, vicious, man-eating corpse that can only be stopped by the severing of the spine or massive head trauma.  And all he has to do is sink his teeth into the next unfortunately curious living thing, and kablamo!  You’ve got an epidemic.

Zombies are eating your neighbors, all governmental infrastructures collapse, helicopters are colliding with helicopters, and everybody stays the hell out of the zoos, because the virus spreads so quickly, and so permanently, that there is no effective way to squelch it from the onset.  All we can do is put our hopes for humanity in the hands of a ragtag group of survivors who seeking in the closest Wal-Mart.

Not the prettiest way to end the world, so if you saw the chance to snuff out the cause at its source, humanity would hope that you would do so, in order to spare us all the flesh-eating, hell-on-earth that comes along with such a scenario.

Anthony Zachariadis was patient zero for the vuvuzela “virus” to spilling into our country.

If you’ve bothered to tune into a World Cup match, as your Twitter feed will tell you, the vuvuzelas–buzzing horns indigenous to South African soccer matches–are pretty much the only sound you’re going to get for the entirety of a match.

We can’t stop them.  Who are we to try and eliminate one of the aspects of the host country’s own traditions–especially a soccer tradition–just because we find them annoying?  But that’s not the point.  Nobody’s trying to put the brakes on South African customs.  Anymore.

However, it is when such a threat crosses to our shores (Where we like our fans sobbing in terror, already wasted, or ruthlessly violent without provocation, but certainly not with plastic horns in their hands) that we may feel free to squash the idea of vuvuzelas under the heel of our boot.

When he brought the frantic, hellish hum of the two foot “instrument” into Yankee Stadium on June 15, Zachariadis was prepared to infect American sports with the vuvuzela, sparking a possible fad to spread across baseball and inevitably, all major sports.  Let’s face it.  In most cities, there’s a lot of common ground tred between “______ Field” and “The ______ Center.”

For five innings, he had tortured the crowd around him with a custom we assumed was sequestered to South Africa, thousands of miles away.  Now, the threat was ringing our doorbell and pounding on the windows.  It wanted in.  And this is America.  Stupid things always happen.

And one brave security guard stepped in and single-handedly saved all our lives.

“You gotta give me the horn,” he pleaded, tears in his eyes, as visions of world capitals falling and the detonation of nuclear bombs filled his head.  “You can’t blow it.”

Maybe we’ll never know his name, but the courage he showed in Yankee Stadium that day will never be forgotten.

Until less than a week later, when the geniuses at Sun Life Stadium decided to hand out vials of zombifying toxins to all fans 13 and over.  I mean, hand out vuvuzelas. And I meant to everyone.

It’s a common lament of sports fans that usage of cross-sports references are dumb, like a snake eating its own tail when there’s a perfectly good burrow of sleeping baby rabbits just across the meadow.  Why say a baseball player is a “slam dunk” for an MVP award? It makes no sense.  Each sport has its own history and traditions, with plenty of aspects to turn to when descriptions need that extra little “high-ya!”

Being the lone Yankees fan obnoxious enough to bring a South African soccer horn to a professional baseball game is one thing.  But being the marketing staff who decides to willfully truck in the things and then willingly hand them out to their fans is off-the-charts asinine.  I recognize its the Marlins, and if they managed to fill three entire sections with fans they’d have to take the next day off to have a 24-hour giggle fit, but the principle remains the same.

"“They’re annoying.  There’s cool things and there’s very non-cool things. That’s a non-cool thing.”  –Joe Maddon"

Coaches hate vuvuzelas.

"“Awful.”  –Cody Ross"

Players hate vuvuzelas.

"“Has there been a mini bike exploding down the street for the last 40 minutes?!”"

Even I hate the vuvuzelas, after I determined just what in hell they were.

Just when the poisoning of baseball’s spectators seemed like it had been sidestepped on that fateful day in Yankee Stadium, the Florida Marlins stadium personnel roll up with a crate full of “Ruin it for everybody.”  Thanks, Sun Life Stadium.  You sure know how to take an enjoyable concept like a “free giveaway” and use it to piss everybody off.  Not to mention the vile instruments may have had an effect on the outcome of the game.

Like a zombie apocalypse, if it were feasible to take the concept of a “vuvuzela craze” catching on in the U.S., whoever managed to stop it would be a folk hero.  One security guard tried.  But he can’t be everywhere at once.  And he certainly can’t be at Sun Life Stadium, because… who is?

We can only hope the sampling baseball received of the despicable party favors will be enough to destroy their advance in popular culture.  There’s no reason to take the vuvuzelas out of South Africa.  But there’s no reason to bring them here either, people.

The Marlins lost, by the way.

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