Home-made chili was a hit this year, and the nachos and dogs are always popular. The folding chairs start out in tidy rows but soon get shoved around to accomodate family groups, visiting teams, and old pals swapping insults and gossip. The place swarms with kids behaving nicely. Big-eyed kids sell the raffle tickets, pick up garbage, and clamber out of the ring to pats and hugs and gruff, kindly words, win or lose. Hundreds of aunts and uncles are on hand to pick up every toppling toddler.
Babies sleep in car-seat carriers.
Family cameras flash and whir continuously. White clad volunteer officials bustle around. And everybody has advice for whichever pair is blasting each other in the big ring. The shows go on for hours with breaks to raffle off donated prizes ranging from wrist watches and training shoes to the ubiquitous Ringside boxing glove key chains. Occasional outbreaks of temperment are contained, swamped in the goofy, human decency of it all.