We’re pretty much the last ones to this party, but one of the Kickball Leagues (the one on the Magnolia side) has been asked to leave Tower Grove Park and play somewhere else after reports of abusive language, public urination, nudity, and disrespect for park rangers, which by the way describes all of St. Louis.
Tower Grove Park Director John Karel said the park tried to accommodate the league’s penchant for lewd behavior and alcohol consumption, but had reached a breaking point.
“When something is consistently showing a pattern of abusive language, public urination, nudity, and disrespect for park rangers we don’t have a choice, this thing was getting out of hand,” Karel said.
The “commissioner” of the league has been fighting back by talking to the media, though apparently not KPLR because they wouldn’t let him do the interview with a beer in his hand. He recently sent an email to the 2,500+ kickball league members:
Whew! What a crazy last couple days. Tower Grove Park(TGP) has unfairly voided our permits for the rest of the season without any kind of due process. The word is that 12 residents that live along Magnolia marched up to the park office on Monday morning with a list of complaints and demanded that we be removed.
Complaint: Pattern of Nudity
Answer: If you call one picture of a guy’s ass on the website a pattern of nudity they are correct.
Complaint: Pattern of Public Urination
Answer: We had two incidents and one of the incidents were non players visiting the fields.
Complaint: Verbal Abusing Park Rangers:
Answer: Complete Denial. Show me a report with a time and place. Did anyone get arrested or ticketed?
There are now videos surfacing, that have since been taken down, showing some of the ‘ballers acting “lewdly”. We have no doubt that a few of the 2,500 people probably have a little more than they should during game days, and we do have a first hand report of people being a bit confrontational to a park ranger. No doubt, people that get out of hand or cause problems for the rangers should be removed from the park, but the fact they all got kicked out is complete crap.
Tower Grove park should not be caving to some stuck-up park adjacent people who just want to have a quiet weekend. You bought a house by a park! In the middle of a city! These are probably the same people who sit around drinking fancy wine they order online swirling it around their glasses like douche bags saying things like “Remember when St. Louis used to be alive like when we were younger?” Having a bunch of people hanging out in the city each weekend is exactly what this city needs more of! Of course some of those people will be dipshits. It happens when you get any group of people around that size, but it’s not worth shooting your neighborhood in the foot just because some asshole puked on your flowers once. Last time we checked, there were plenty of drunken assholes at Cardinal games, but no one’s saying we should move those out to the county so they don’t ruin anyone’s weekend.
Despite out obviously correct view on the situation above, the thoughts on the matter in the Riverfront Time’s comment section are decidedly more bipartisan.
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Ah, the tired old argument that it’s “just a small minority” causing trouble. BS.
Tower Grove Park is not public; it is still run by a private non-profit. And to all you people on the leagues who claim the drunken behavior “is not that bad,” you must be either willfully blind to the behavior, or wasted too.
The puerile names of both the league and teams speak for themselves.
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The director of the park is a little B*!ch and that is why this is happening. He complains about anything he can. I am honestly surprised the league was allowed to play as long as they were. And, yes, even worse behavior goes on at the gay pride parade each year. People have sex in public then. But, since the Director is gay, he won’t put the kabbash on that.
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fucking hipster hoosier kickballer motherfuckers. next time you jump out in front of my car as i’m crusing [sic] down arsenal, i’ll have to pick american apparel out of my grill.
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All violations aside: I am sorry to hear we will be losing 2500+ people having a good time in the City of St. Louis every weekend.
Perhaps the league could move the to the future Chouteau Park site (Newstead & Chouteau).
The first commenter I quote above touched on something that keeps coming up in the comments against the kickball league: The team names. Here are a few examples: Banana Hammocks, Gang Bang All-Stars, TWAT, Morning Sex, Ballz In Your Mouf, Swift Kick In the Grass. Yes, some of these aren’t things you could probably get away with on the radio, but last I checked, no one’s trying to. They are running up and down the street with megaphones, these are team names on a shirt. When driving by Tower Grove Park we see the droves of killballers wearing their gear and we never heard or even saw anything about these names (or any overly unruly behavior for that matter). The fact is, these stuck up (kick)ball-busters were pissed anyway and then decided to throw the names they had just heard of on to the pile of angst created by years of their wife refusing sex and their dog finally learning to fight back.
Here’s the deal Tower Grove people: You wanted to live in the city? This is what cities do…they have lots of people hanging out having a good time, enjoying the parks and local establishments. Shooing away large groups of people trying to enjoy the city is the attitude that keeps St. Louis from being so crappy you gotta have two layovers to get here from anywhere. Jesus, we’re like one more population drop away from having to make tourists be parachuted in like your going to the damn rainforest…you know, but with more humidity in the summer.
You don’t like all the noise of people having fun in the city? We hear Detroit is lovely and really really quiet all the time.
via St Louis Public Radio and the RFT