DBWI: Sport hooliganism in UK/Europe, rather than U.S.

(I originally posted this on SHWI in 2009. Strictly speaking the POD is pre-1900, but most of the interesting effects are post-1900.)

I saw a good movie recently on the subject of sports hooliganism, with Charlie Hunnam, Elijah Wood and Carlos Estevez, and it's got an interesting WI spinning in my head. The film is called Clark Street Hooligans, and centers on Hunnam's character, a well-bred young Englishman who after being wrongly expelled from Oxford travels to Chicago to visit his sister and her husband (Estevez). He meets his brother-in-law's brother, played by Elijah Wood, who is the leader of a Chicago Cubs "firm," which as we all know is a violent gang that loves nothing more than to get into brawls with other baseball teams' firms, in this case mainly the South Side firm supporting the White Sox.

After the Hunnam character breaks his habit of calling baseball "rounders," he finds himself engaging in the first fights of his well-mannered life alongside his new friends in the Clark Street Elite (CSE). Not wanting to spoil anything I'll stop the plot description here, and get to the WI: While Europe and the UK have seen a little socc...er, football... -related disorder once in a great while, sport hooliganism has never been a problem on that side of the pond the way it's been for over a century in the US. We see it a little from fans of (American) football and basketball too, sometimes hockey in the northern U.S. and Canada, but no other sport in any other country rivals American baseball for fan violence.

What if it were the other way around? What if football teams in the UK and Europe had gangs of hooligans fighting each other? What if this weren't the case in the US? The timing of the World Series, ending around the same time as presidential elections has certainly tipped the scales in a few close elections going all the way back to Grover Cleveland's failed bid for a second non-consecutive term, up to Dan Quayle's victory over President Gore in 2004. How might elections have gone without baseball firm violence making incumbents look bad (Gore), or causing other complications (the strangeness of the 1892 election)?

On a completely off-topic note, Elijah Wood is also very good on the BBC series Heirs of Chaos, playing a Triumph riding rural English criminal. He completely disappears into his role as a Brit IMO, looking nothing like the American baseball hooligan he plays in Clark Street.
 
I wonder if having gridiron game survive might lessen the violence associated with baseball? I know not everyone's familiar with it - long story short, back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, US colleges used to play an incredibly violent Americanized version of Rugby football. President Hanna was so disgusted by the brutal play and by fan violence that he convinced congress to ban the game altogether.
 
This is ridiculous. You think a people as cultured as the British people would be violent? It's certainly possible to reduce sports hooliganism in the US, but make it occur in Britain. ASB! ASB!

(All IC)
 
I wonder if having gridiron game survive might lessen the violence associated with baseball? I know not everyone's familiar with it - long story short, back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, US colleges used to play an incredibly violent Americanized version of Rugby football.
It's funny, just yesterday I was reading the Wikipedia article on that game. Are you sure the violence associated with it wouldn't be even worse, given the brutality happening on the field?

President Hanna was so disgusted by the brutal play and by fan violence that he convinced congress to ban the game altogether.
A possible, little-known effect of the SCOTUS ruling in Lawrence v Mississippi, which struck down that state's law criminalizing S&M/BDSM, is that the century-plus old federal statute you referenced may be unconstitutional as well. Somebody would have to try actually playing that gridiron game again, everyone gets arrested by the feds, test case, yadda yadda, and no one's going to do that over a sport no one has heard of. I was also reading, though, that before Congress banned it there was one proposal that might have made the game safer and averted the ban: Legal forward passes. As in regular rugby, forward passes were illegal in American gridiron rugby. The game would become safer, but would probably have become too easy/high scoring.

Finally, yeah, the Brits are just too well mannered for sport hooliganism. What about on the continent, though?
 
It's funny, just yesterday I was reading the Wikipedia article on that game. Are you sure the violence associated with it wouldn't be even worse, given the brutality happening on the field?

It's kind of counterintuitive, but the idea is if you keep the violence on the field, it'll keep it off the streets.

A possible, little-known effect of the SCOTUS ruling in Lawrence v Mississippi, which struck down that state's law criminalizing S&M/BDSM, is that the century-plus old federal statute you referenced may be unconstitutional as well. Somebody would have to try actually playing that gridiron game again, everyone gets arrested by the feds, test case, yadda yadda, and no one's going to do that over a sport no one has heard of. I was also reading, though, that before Congress banned it there was one proposal that might have made the game safer and averted the ban: Legal forward passes. As in regular rugby, forward passes were illegal in American gridiron rugby. The game would become safer, but would probably have become too easy/high scoring.

General Blood and Guts Roosevelt (1) was a big gridiron fan. I'm not sure he'd be happy with a change like that.

Finally, yeah, the Brits are just too well mannered for sport hooliganism. What about on the continent, though?

The pasta eating surrender monkeys couldn't possibly fight like that, (2) but I could see the French and Imperial Russians doing it. Maybe the Ukranians? Most Germans are probably to orderly, but maybe it'd take hold in the Bavarian Republic. Who knows what the crazy Catalonians would do? (3) All those little Balkan countries seem to love fighting each other, I bet they'd take to it like fish to water. (4)

I know the Aussies got brought up. They have a rough and tumble culture that'd be suited to hooliganism.

Maybe it's something inherent in baseball. Look at the ABL - the Japanese firms are kinda scary and the Republic of China firms are pretty hardcore. But Okinawan firms are the worst. The CBL has a few. The LABL is pretty calm though. (5)

Notes:
1- TR stays in the military.
2 - Italy gets the rep for surrendering.
3 - Russia is a constitutional monarchy, the Ukraniane, Bavaria, and Catalonia are small countries with various flavors of far left systems anarchism in Bavaria, council communism in Catalonia, and a sort of. They're relatively succesful. Here, communism and anarchism aren't seen as failed ideas. But the general idea is "Socislism can't work in big places. Yeah, it works in little places like Quebec and Bavaria, but not here!
4 - Extreme Balkanization.
5 - These are the Asian Baseball League, the Caribbean Baseball League, and the Latin American Baseball League, respectively. Republic of China is communist Taiwan and Okinawa is independent and another small left wing republic.
 
Simple, blue collar = hooliganism. It is a shame that sports never really taken off in places like New York and Washington, those people would have respect for the game, but people complained and mayors would have none of it.

They should take the teams out of the poorer cities and move them into more well-off areas.
 
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