I was at a girl’s basketball game, recording it for the TV station. It feeds live onto the cable system and the internet.  There was a parent from the visiting team to my right, at the far end of the reporter’s table sitting on the top row of bleachers.  During the Junior Varsity game he was very loudly complaining about the calls the referees were making.  This is usual.  He was very loud.

About half way through the 2nd quarter he started up again, yelling at the refs for not calling an obvious foul committed by the local team. The camera saw it clearly but the refs must not have.  I saw some motion to my right, at the end of the reporter’s table there on the top row of bleachers.  This was a parent of the local team, the father of the girl that had committed the uncalled foul. He stood up on the bleachers to stare at the loud visiting parent.

I lived in New York City for almost 20 years, so I have a finely honed sense of who the insane person is that you need to keep your eye on.  So when I saw the local man stand up, started watching him.  The visitor was NOT a problem, this guy was. He glares at the visitor, and then violently shows his middle finger.  The visitor must have responded because this local parent starts charging, looking for the path to cross sides. He wants to start a fight!  I could see him decide to climb over the family sitting below me on the next row down. He was going to disrupt the game, climb over this family, embarrass his daughter on the court, embarrass the school. And most likely go down in a second because the visitor was 300 pounds and very strong and tall.  The local guy didn’t have a chance.

So I stood up and shouted at the local man, you can hear me very clearly on the broadcast.

“Hey! Hey! You stop that right now!  I have equipment here, man, come on!”  He did what I wanted and sat down, but he said to me, “You can’t tell me what to do!”

I know from my years of experience that once to achieve the goal you wanted with the crazy person, you disengage immediately, lest you get drawn into their field of craziness.

Stephanie told me that I sounded like a parent disciplining his errant child.  Which is about right.  I have heard from two different people since then who were watching the game live and heard me shouting.  They wanted to know what had been going on.

The teams on the court were getting ready for a foul shot and the place was getting quiet.  By the time I stopped shouting the place was so quiet you could hear a pin drop!  I realized afterward that the only thing most people knew was that the TV station guy was shouting at a local parent!  They didn’t know that he was trying to start a fight. But stop a fight I did and the foul shot went on like nothing had happened.  You can see in the video a few people look up toward the camera to see what was going on, why the TV station guy was interrupting the game.

What I achieved was breaking the local parent out of his psychotic episode, bringing him back to reality and embarrassing him in front of the whole room.  I averted a fight and the world went on like nothing happened.  I thought about how awful things would have been if I hadn’t gotten involved: he would have run down the family sitting below me, maybe damaged the TV equipment, ran up the visitor and then been knocked right out. The game would have been interrupted, they’d have called the police and an ambulance, the video footage would be evidence, that guy would have gone to jail and his daughter would have been mortally embarrassed.

And the whole time I was sitting there watching the local parent glaring at the visitor, all that was going through my head was the South Park episode where Randy Marsh accompanies his son to the Little League games and fights another parent at each game, working his way up to the Big Leagues.  Because NOT fighting is just not an option.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/154919/division-2-dads

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s09e05-the-losing-edge