Keyboard Quarterbacks

By Mark La Monica

The pat-down. It has grown into a custom at most New York sporting events nowadays.

You spend your dollars for a ticket to watch your team play. But wait, there's more. Act now and you also get the chance to have a strange man places his hands on different parts of your body for a few seconds.

That's not part of the ticket price, but it's become an added bonus for New York fans ever since Sept. 11. It's so ingrained in our stadium experiences now that when you go to a game elsewhere, you forget you don't have to schedule a few extra minutes into your walk from the tailgate to the ticket gate.

At the Florida-Kentucky game in Lexington a few weeks back, the ticket dude scanned my ticket and I walked in. Didn't even have to wait for him to scan my ankles, my ribs, my back, my arms, my everything else. What a pleasure it was.

But I'm here to tell you that you can still have fun at the pat-down. I devised this little prank on the fly Saturday night at the Devils-Islanders game at Nassau Coliseum, and I recommend to everyone.

It starts with being benevolent and letting your friend go ahead of you in line. Then, once the security guard starts to pat him down from the front, you pat him down from the back.

Your friend will inevitably start to laugh and giggle at the double pat-down. Only, the security guard has no idea why your friend is laughing and thinks he's thoroughly enjoying the involuntary man-rub.

The laughing will elicit a number of strange looks and awkward pauses from the security guard. Then, when it's your turn to get manhandled by the dude in a yellow windbreaker, you can say something to the effect of "Don't touch me the way you did that guy in front of me. Did you see the way he giggled and looked at you when you patted him down?"

Ah, yes, it's a brilliant prank to play on a friend. Heck, try it with someone you don't know, too. Then report back to me on its success.