The Primal Scream

A friend named Mario used to say that when life seemed overwhelming, the best way to relieve stress was to yell.

It had something to do with the primal scream theory that was popular back in the days when we were rapping and marching and doing our own thing.

Mario was a baseball freak, and when we’d go to a Giants game together he’d observe me watching quietly and say, “Blow off steam, man, open up! Yell!”

“Yell for what,” I’d ask. “Our guy just struck out.”

“You aren’t yelling for him,” he’d say, “you’re yelling for you!”

I thought about Mario the other night at a Dodgers game. I hadn’t been to one in about 10 years and decided that in view of the craziness going on in the country, it might be good for me to get out there and, well, yell.

There’s not a lot to be enthusiastic about this season when it comes to the Boys in Blue, but 29,702 of us turned out anyhow to watch them commit three errors while losing the game to the Colorado Rockies 5 to 4.

And I got a great opportunity to yell, but not at the players.

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My wife and I were sitting in the cheap seats, which were about as high up as you could go and not be in the Goodyear Blimp. Since I was only there to make noise, it was OK with me.

My expressions of distaste or enthusiasm are usually limited to a nod or a good finger-wagging, but neither seemed appropriate at a time when everyone else was bellowing like elephants in heat.

I began raising my voice in about the middle of the second inning when things were looking pretty good for the Dodgers, before their suspenders broke and their pants fell down.

Just about then, I heard the blare of a radio behind me. A woman and her man, both yelling for no apparent reason, came lumbering down the stairs. She was carrying a radio and he was carrying a suitcase.

The radio was turned up full volume to the baseball game at which we were all in attendance. She was listening to the Dodgers while watching the Dodgers. The suitcase, more of an overnight bag I guess, was full of food.

They sat three rows in front of us eating and yelling and listening to that damned radio. Eventually I was yelling too, but it had nothing to do with the game. I wanted that stupid radio turned off and I also could have done without them spraying food over the stands whenever they hollered.

Their yelling, however, easily drowned out my yelling, so I decided to go tell them face to face that no one with an IQ over 78 attends a game and listens to it on the radio at the same time. But then my wife pointed out they were both bigger than me and I’d better think twice, which I did.

She said, “Don’t try to beat the hell out of them, dear. Wait until tomorrow and write the hell out of them.” There’s a wise woman.

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They were a strange couple. The man sat two rows in front of the woman and both disappeared periodically for long periods of time. Only the noisy radio and their feed bag remained as evidence of their existence, like a ship abandoned at sea with a pot of crab stew still bubbling on the stove.

Meanwhile, several stories below, the Dodgers were becoming unraveled so smoothly it was almost as though they’d been working on the technique all season. All right, boys, listen up: Instead of catching the ball with your mitt turned upward, you turn your mitt face down and watch the ball bounce off your knuckles and roll into center field. Like that.

The Eating Woman returned, chewing on a Dodger Dog, and as she passed our seats she yelled, “Hit the ball, old stupid!” while spraying bits of bun down the steep aisle.

Jim Eisenreich was at bat and his picture was on the large screen in center field. I’m not sure why he was Old Stupid. Maybe the picture did make him look a little, well, vacant, but baseball players aren’t hired on the basis of either their graduate degrees or their similarity to Tom Cruise. Just swing the bat and catch the ball, that’s all.

The Eating Woman kept calling him Old Stupid, which offended me because I know how it is to be the object of invective. In response, I yelled and clapped with such vigor on his behalf that she turned, glared, picked up her radio and her feed bag and took off. Her man never did return.

I left the game feeling a lot better having yelled my guts out. I guess I have Mario and Old Stupid to thank for that.

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Al Martinez is online at al.martinez@latimes.com. His column appears on Tuesdays and Fridays.