Best Way to See OTL: Incognito

True confessions time. I went to Fiesta Island last weekend for the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club Over-The-Line World Championship Tournament. Please don’t tell my mother.

OTL, you see, has a reputation that makes Wade Boggs seem like the old image of Steve Garvey. If these were Biblical times, Lot’s wife would be looking back at Fiesta Island from her seat in the shuttle bus and turning into a pillar of salt.

That’s how these festivities are viewed, particularly from afar.

Even the initials “OTL” have taken the form of culprits, as though they stand for One Tumultuous Lark. In truth, OTL in its recreational form is played 50 weekends a year hereabouts. No one pays much attention, except for wives and girlfriends and husbands and boyfriends. Not that they bother going.

However, most folks think OTL is something that comes each July for two weekends and then goes away. It is on those two weekends that OTL ceases to be recreational and becomes, at best, socio-cultural and, at worst, downright bacchanal.

To be sure, were OTL a person, I wouldn’t want any of my kids dating it . . . or visiting it. The program is something you take home in a manila envelope and hope Aunt Maude doesn’t stumble across it. It would get as R as a movie, though some detractors would certainly give it an X.

Having been away from the spectacle for a while, I ventured to Fiesta Island for the first of two weekends. I wanted to see if OTL had matured or mellowed in its 36th year.

I found that OTL really has two personalities, one no more (or less) obnoxious than any weekend at any beach and the other as loud and outlandish as the most abrasive Las Vegas comic.

You see, with OTL, you are dealing with both video and audio.

With the exception of the games themselves, which are not a high spectator priority, Fiesta Island in a visual sense is like a walk on the boardwalk any weekend. The difference, of course, is that there is no boardwalk.

What you see are people dressed anywhere from scantily to casually. They are carrying beverages, beverage containers and folding chairs. Collectively, they are covered with enough oil to fill the tanks of the Exxon Valdez and leave a slick from here to the Aleutians.

Indeed, on these two weekends a year, I would like to open a concession stand on the corner of E. Mission Bay and Fiesta Island Road. I would sell suntan oil, beverage containers and folding chairs, and I could retire and play OTL recreationally the other 50 weekends of the year.

These people, at least 95% of them, are going to Fiesta Island to either get some sun or look at each other or both, exactly the same reasons they would go to Mission Beach or La Jolla Shores or Moonlight. On these weekends, they all go to Fiesta Island because that is where everyone is going, except for the people who are convinced no one goes anymore because it is too crowded.

This game of OTL, thus, plays the role of the host who gets everyone together and then cannot get anyone’s attention. To a great extent, the guests turn their cheeks--yes, those cheeks--on the games themselves.

Most folks do not know who is playing whom or where. At least on this weekend, spouses and lovers pay attention. After all, world championships will be decided sometime Sunday afternoon.

Now, there is one way to follow exactly what is going on.

You listen to the public address announcer. This is the audio part. This is where the character of these weekends is defined. Understandably, there are folks who find the P.A. announcer to be offensive, though it has nothing to do with his breath or his clothes or the way he cuts his hair.

No, this fellow has to announce what teams are playing where. To do so, he has to identify the teams. He can do it there, but we cannot do it here.

Many, maybe most, of the team names are ribald or vulgar or insensitive or . . .

You get the idea. The team names, in fact, differentiate one year from another more than anything else, because darn near everything else stays the same.

This is the year, for example, that Pete Rose, Steve Garvey, Wade Boggs and Richard Silberman are taking a licking in team names. You get a little bit of a black eye, and these folks will come up with a team name that’ll punch you in the nose.

Name anyone who has been touched by controversy in the past 36 years, and I guarantee you that OTL teams have been named in his or her dishonor. You can trace history by OTL team names, though the city schools are unlikely to adopt this approach to keeping munchkins interested.

Of course, I do have a solution for anyone who would like to enjoy Fiesta Island this weekend without being exposed to the obscene and outrageous side of the OTL experience.

Wear ear muffs.

You wouldn’t be the first. Right, Mom?