Once again, decency is on the ballot.

Most of us know what’s right and what’s wrong.

I took the kids to a Yankees game over Labor Day weekend. It was a hot and muggy day I commonly (and angrily) refer to as a “bad hair day”, but we didn’t care. Watching the Yankees is one of the few things the three of us enjoy equally, so we hit the Quick Check for the requisite crap food grab, put Bruno Mars on shuffle as per tradition, and hit the road.

We went straight to our seats so we didn’t miss a second. But when we got to them, they were filled. I checked my tickets, confirmed they were ours, asked politely if they could move, and move they did without complaint. End of story, right?

Not so much.

It should have been, but sadly it wasn’t. I had asked nicely, the two guys in our seats complied quietly, and as I was settling in for the game, the guy directly in front of me turned around, looked at me, looked at the guys I then realized he was with, and slurred, “Why the fuck did you make my friends move?!?”

He was hammered. Swaying and spitting, glaring at me, my 11 year old daughter and my 14 year old son.

The kids looked at me and then down instantly. I knew they were worried. I knew Abbie was already scared. I took a deep breath, grabbed her hand and replied calmly, “These are our seats.”

“The fuck they are!” He continued, while his equally inebriated girlfriend, wife, sex traffic victim, bad at her job babysitter or whatever the fuck she was tried in vain to shush him.

I said nothing. Kept my hand on Abbie’s and my gaze on the field. I made a pact with myself that I wasn’t going to let this escalate, and if you know me, which at this point you probably do, that was not going to be an easy task. But this was Yankee stadium, this was our special place. I wasn’t going to let some drunk loser ruin it for us.

“Just so you know,” he continued, “I’m gonna be a pain in your ass the whole game!!” He shouted at me.

I gave him a sarcastic thumbs up and Abbie squeezed my hand tightly.

As Aaron Judge came up to bat, the prick was still standing, still swaying, shouting random shit at the top of his lungs like, “I LOVE YOU MORE THAN DRUGS!!” (Yes, really).

I could see the women all around me nudging the men with them. I could feel their silent pleas of “dude, do something.”

But no one did.

Well, I thought to myself, since no one else is going to speak up, I guess I’ll have to. I don’t exactly have a sit still and say nothing setting as you may have noticed.

“Could you please sit down?” I asked. “We’d like to see Judge bat too.”

Well, that was all it took. The drunk-ass piece of shit turned around and screamed, “IF YOU WANTED TO SEE HIM HIT YOU SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN BETTER SEATS!!!!! CUZ I AM NOT GONNA BE SITTING!!!!”

At that point I could feel Abbie’s entire body tense up. I saw my son’s face begging me not to say another word. And there I sat, with that scumbag screaming at me in front of my kids with all of those people around us watching silently. I was trying to breathe. Trying to unclench my teeth. Trying to stop myself from standing up, slamming my hands on his stupid chest, and sending that motherfucker 6 rows down into the stands on his motherfucking head.

But just as my mouth began to form the start of, “Oh hell fucking no…” I heard a voice from behind me.

“SIR, are you blocking this family from seeing the game?!?”

I turned around to see a female security guard leaning over the rail like a guardian angel in light blue, and she was pointing at the guy in front of me.

She had to say it again to get his attention.

And that time he responded flatly with a “Yes. Yes I am,”

And when she then told him to sit down, he replied with a rather simple, “NO.”

The kids were looking at me. Everyone around us was watching this unfold, mouths agape. I didn’t say a word.

“Did you say no? No, you’re not gonna sit?” She asked him again.

And that’s when he gave her his shortest answer yet, and flipped her off.

I looked up at her in shock, watching for her reaction. She didn’t yell at him. Didn’t get upset. She smiled. She looked at me and the kids, and said, “I’ll be right back.”

Unfortunately for us, the moment she walked away the fucking guy started in on me again.

“You got security you little bitch?!? Oh it’s on now!!!”

At that point, Abbie was crying. Leo’s head was in his hands, and as I surveyed the whole sad scene before me, I said, “Dude, I’m here with my kids. Can you please just stop?”

My appeal to the “humanity” of a guy like that went over about as well as you’d expect.

It made him worse.

So, that was when I grabbed our stuff, stood up, and told the kids to move.

By the time we got into the concessions area, Abbie was in the throes of a full scale anxiety attack. I sent Leo to get her some water. And as he returned with it, I saw that guy, the same f’ng guy whose blood type was already at least 75% alcohol, heading to the bar to order another drink. And that was it. That was my breaking point. I saw a male security guard on the other side of the bar, and I approached him. Before I could get two words in, I was crying.

How had something so special gone so horribly awry? It was a nightmare. I felt so deeply disappointed. So sad. So heartbroken for the kids.

He said he knew who I was and he knew some of what had happened. He said he was very sorry for all of it, but not to worry. And then he said, “I give the guy 6 minutes tops before he’s gone.”

They’d cut him off at the bar, and when he started to protest loudly as they knew he would, he found himself surrounded. Not by one security guard, by a sea of them and a whole bunch of NYC Police too. The kids were trying to watch without being seen and then all of the sudden, just like the security guard had said, the guy was gone. In the elevator and on the street, in what was probably just around 6 minutes.

The female guard found us. Checked on us. Assured the kids they’d never let anything happen to them. And walked us back to our seats, where we had a newly unobstructed view of the game.

A little while later, as I was about to hand the kids some much needed therapy hot dogs, a giant guy walked up to me. This guy looked like a professional linebacker. He was towering over me. I was still on edge so it took me aback when he said, “Excuse me…”

“Yeah?” I asked thinking what the fuck now?

“I gotta tell you, that was really cool. The way you got that guy kicked out. He was a real asshole, huh?”

My eyes narrowed, head cocked to one side, “You saw all that? You heard all that?”

“Yeah, I was sitting right in front of him.”

“And you didn’t think to, like — say anything?” I asked while visibly surveying this guy’s 6 something, bench presses school buses or some shit, significant frame.

“Nah, you had it handled.” He said. “You’re a badass.”

I was speechless. This giant dude could have, at any point, intervened, and he didn’t. No one did. They all just sat there silently while some sleazy drunk harassed a mom and her two kids at a baseball game.

And I had two thoughts, the first of which was ‘hell fucking yes I had it handled, I don’t need any man to rescue me’ and the second was, ‘how sad that no one else, no one, thought to do anything about it.’

They didn’t want to get involved. So they kept their heads down and let it go on.

And it struck me, because as many times as I’ve heard stories like that, stories where people choose not to intervene when someone else is being attacked, I’d never really lived it.

That is human nature. It’s unfortunate, it’s not true of everyone thank God, but it isn’t all that unusual really. I’m sure there is a psychological term for it I could just google, but I don’t need to, because I know how it felt to be on the other side of it.

It made me really sad.

And then today, as I was looking back at the clips from Trump’s truly unhinged rally yesterday, it hit me — our entire country is grappling with this very thing right now in many ways. So many are just looking the other way, putting their heads down, shuffling in their chairs, or looking past it.

He called Kamala Harris, “mentally disabled”, in the same “speech” he once again called immigrants “animals.” And the crowd cheered.

He didn’t say she was mentally unstable.

He didn’t say unbalanced, unsound, unwell, unsettled or unhinged.

He said she was mentally “disabled.”

Because he meant it as a slur.

This is someone who told his nephew to let his disabled son die & then move to Florida.

Someone who made fun of Joe Biden’s stutter.

Mocked John McCain’s limited arm movement.

And mimicked a reporter with a congenital joint condition.

I know we’re not perfect, but we have to be better than that.

I don’t expect the diehard cultists to stand up and subject themselves to this kind of vitriol,

I’d have to be a real idiot to think that. But when I watched Republican after Republican being asked about it on tv today and realized that as per usual, none of them would disavow his gruesome comments, it occurred to me that they don’t think their constituents care.

They know people would prefer to not “get involved” with that kind of vitriol. So their electeds weren’t going to bother to speak out against it.

And in each instance, as per usual, a non-answer was good enough for the reporter to move on, and the same fucking cycle of normalizing indecency that happens every single fucking time, started all over again.

There are still so many of us out there, like all of you reading this right now, for whom this is not acceptable. This is not ok. Folks who know that the only way we can defeat that kind of ugliness is to deal with it directly. To call it out. To confront it. To stand up and say something. Even if it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it is.

And I think a lot of the people who stay silent in the face of the never-ending stream of sickness that spews out of Trump’s mouth are like that guy at the game who watched in silence while rooting for me at the same time.

So, I want to appeal to them in this moment. I don’t want to demand that they stand up and speak out. I don’t expect them to. But I do want to ask them to remember how it makes them feel to watch him bully the disabled. Watch him mock those who stutter. I do want to ask them to tap into that part of who they are which still fundamentally knows right from wrong.

Plenty of us will do the standing up and the calling out. Plenty of us will get involved.

But we still really, really need for those people who silently cheer for us… and to vote.

To vote for decency.

To vote for the woman who is being bullied by an extremely damaged human being. To vote for the woman who has and will continue to, be the one who stands up and speaks out.

We don’t have to accept this. We don’t have to accept him.

And while I don’t think too manyMAGA devotees will read my words on here, a few just might. And if it changes even one mind, it’ll have been worth it.

Vote your conscience. Vote for decency. Vote to end his abuse. Vote to hold him accountable.

I don’t blame all those people who watched me and the kids being bullied for not saying anything. I had it handled.

If I needed their help, I’d have asked for it.

But right now, in this fight, facing what we’re facing, I’m asking for help.

Vote for what you know is right.

I know you’re out there. I know you’ve had enough of him too.

Let’s get the bully carried out of the stadium, so we can all sit back and enjoy the game in peace and quiet for a little while.

🙏🏻