In an all too common story after sporting events, a Baltimore Ravens fan is in intensive care and fighting for his life. The incident stemmed from an altercation that Joseph Bauer, a 55-year-old man and former marine, had with two fans of the Oakland Raiders.
“My brother is in critical condition on life support over a football game,” the victim’s brother, Susan Bauer said, per Carrie Wells of The Baltimore Sun.“We’re in shock over this. You just don’t expect that you would go to a football game and someone would put you in intensive care. I just can’t even believe it’s happening.”
Wells also reported that Bauer has a 30 percent chance to survive.
For those of us who have been to NFL games, this is sadly not that shocking. These altercations seem to happen at an increasingly high rate at NFL stadiums.
While the Raiders fans were both arrested, any guesses on who’s to blame here would be just that. Nobody who didn’t see the incident can really speculate on how everything got started. And police have yet to get to the bottom of the matter.
But we can make a pretty good bet that too much alcohol was involved. While the NFL and its teams tell the fans to drink responsibly, few do.
We can say definitively that whatever did happen before the fight wasn’t worth this. Nothing that happens at NFL game should leave anyone in the hospital with less than a 50 percent chance of survival.