Walking into AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants, it seemed that everything was perfect.

The park is beautiful. It’s a baseball fan’s paradise. It’s wide open, but fans are still close to the game. Everything a fan needs – memorabilia, food and drinks, autograph accessibility – are there.

Of course, nothing is ever perfect, as discovered when we sat down in our seats, which were behind the right-field line, in the second row and near the Texas Rangers bullpen.

Seated in front of us were four obnoxious fans, all in their early 20s, who apparently thought paying their $34 ticket gave them the right to be rude and crude to Ranger pitchers.

Now, let’s back up a moment. Before attending this game, my experiences at major league ballgames have been limited to watching the Boston Red Sox at Fenway Park. I’ve been there in the left-field grandstand as a child accompanied by my father, brothers and Cummings cousins, in bleachers as a college student witnessing the famed Boston massacre in 1978, in the box seats via tickets from the late Bud Leavitt, and then finally back in the grandstand taking my children to games.

Through all those games, Boston made good on its reputation on having some of the meanest and rudest fans in the major leagues. During several games, fights broke out in the bleachers.

Somehow, it seemed things might be different in San Francisco. A different level of sophistication perhaps? Or, more likely, just my smalltown Maine naiveness.

Unfortunately, at AT&T Park, we discovered that human behavior can be consistently poor from coast to coast.

Major leaguers get a heavy dose of verbal abuse from fans and seem to be immune to it. Righthander Kevin Millwood, the Rangers starting pitcher, didn’t seem to be bothered by the abuse and even took the time to sign some autographs for the normal fans.

And, as the game started, the level of shouting went down as the four fanatics in front of us lost their easy targets of abuse.

The game proceeded and we saw Barry Bonds do something he has done many times – get an intentional walk. However, we were later treated to a line-drive three-run home run by the Giants’ Randy Winn, a Bonds double, and two singles by former UMaine star Mark Sweeney.

However, as the Giants rallied in the middle innings, Texas pitchers returned to the bullpen and were rudely welcomed by a heavier dose of abuse from the four fans. The four had probably now consumed more alcohol and were fueled by the false bravado.

Their shouts to the pitchers were now laced with profanity and taunts of homosexuality. It actually reached a point that a Rangers’ coach told the fans that they should stand up if they wanted to make such claims. Sadly, they did stand, and other fans around us shook their heads in pitiful disgust as the four fans could not grasp their level of brazen behavior.

Throughout this, it also surprised me, perhaps a bit chauvinistically, that two of the fans were women. In the past, it’s been my experience that when men’s poor behavior reaches the rude and crude level at ballparks, then women always display better common sense and put a stop to all of it.

That wasn’t the case this time, however, and my wife – a sixth-grade teacher – was appalled to learn that one of the women proclaimed in one of her rants that she was a fourth-grade teacher.

In this case, let’s hope that ball field lessons don’t extend to the classroom.

Sports editor Joe McLaughlin can be reached at 990-8229 or jmclaughlin@bangordailynews.net