With the St. Louis Cardinals hosting “OUT At The Ballpark” on Saturday for some 200 gay fans, everyone wants to know: Will the team aim their Kiss Cam at the homos? Maybe! Maybe not!
The gays will be one of 40 groups at the game on Saturday, and a Cardinals spokesperson says they don’t take special requests for who appears on the cam. Oh, and this: “We have never had anyone make a request so they can use the Kiss Cam to make a social statement.”
Ah, so that’s how the Cardinals are approaching this baby. Making a “social statement.” Which, on the one hand, it kind of is: We’re here, we’re queer, we’re drinking beer, get used to it. But it’s also anything but: The Kiss Cam is something the Cardinals already use, and it regularly features opposite-sex smooching, so why not play fair? Or has all this steroids crap totally sullied baseball’s idea of good sportsmanship?
“We look for lively areas, full areas where people are in their seats, watching the video board, somewhat paying attention,” says scoreboard operations director Tony Simokaitis. “We try to get as many people in as we can in the minute and a half between innings. There’s not a lot of time to allow us to make calculated judgments in terms of demographics.”
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Uh. You can be sure that when the Cardinals play the San Diego Padres tomorrow, the gay section will be “lively.”
One thing to note: The team spokesperson insists the Kiss Cam has shown at a half dozen same-sex smooches so far this season, but, reports STLToday.com, “the team has no idea whether the couples were gay.” Which makes me think some of those kisses were either two straight gals smooching for some cheers, or something which resembled the incident that started this whole mess in the first place:
The request [to be featured on the Kiss Cam at tomorrow’s game] came about after a Kiss Cam moment at the Rams game on Sunday. The roaming camera caught two men in Arizona Cardinals jerseys standing next to each other. As the camera lingered, the men tried to shoo it away to laughter and jeers from the crowd. [Harrison Roberts, a local bar owner who wants to be featured on the camera,] said some customers came in to the bar on Monday and told him they had been offended that the camera operator would choose to embarrass Arizona fans by portraying them as a gay couple.
Oh, and we still talking about the ridiculous issue of whether or not we’ll show two adults pecking each other’s lips? The real crime is what a beer costs at Busch Stadium.
[photo via]
CJ
Seems like their policy is fair. They don’t discriminate – but they also won’t specifically cater to any special group. With so many groups, they can’t cater to gays without catering to everyone else. They’ve already had a half dozen same-sex kisses on the cam – so I don’t see what the big deal is. They’re not disallowing it.
Jeffree
I think the best policy would be to skip the “kiss cam” all together. Nobody’s feelings get hurt, nobody has to show off, and we don’t have to watched over-beered people swapping saliva !
It’s just a fad that just wouldn’t go away….
Sed
The kiss cam is one of the dumbest ideas that man has ever created.
What if you went to the game with your sister? What if you’re at the game with a friend from work or something? It’s dumb and gross in my opinion.
Scott in NYC
Frankly, this feels like Queerty trumping up a whole issue to have something to write about. Not all gay people want special treatment for being gay, as this article would suggest and I think we are past the point of seeing two guys kiss everywhere. It’s enough…we’re asking the world to grow up about gay issues/relations…we should start with ourselves.
Maxx E. Padd
People forget that the owners of the Cardinals are big doners to the Republican party. Don’t forget that G.W. Bush threw out the first ball at the Cardinals opener the year he was first elected. This was a favor to the owners of the Cards. The San Diego Chargers and Los Angeles Dodgers owners are also big doners to the Republican Party. And manager Tony La Russa was at the Glen Beck Rally last month. I use to be a La Russa fan. Not any more. Go A’s.