I’ve had my ups and downs with American sports over the years. I’ve always thought baseball seemed like a crass version of cricket without any of the intricacies or skill of the latter, and that it seemed interminably boring. During my time living in the States I maintained a mild interest in American football and even got to the point of understanding some of the rules. I watched high school basketball. But I quickly lost interest in both once no longer surrounded by them. Football is LONG. I mean, it takes a really long time to accomplish anything. Gameplay occurs for just a few seconds at a time and is punctuated by long periods of time where teams change from offence to defence, discuss tactics, and generally just fart about. And there’s SO MANY of them. Squads of 100 players appear from the benches once a game is over to slap each other on the behind, and for the amount of play that actually goes on, that’s just too many.
Basketball is the polar opposite. It’s fast, fluid and the squads are small. It has much more of a purity about it. But despite the fact that I think it is a far more athletic and skilled game than football (aside from the quarterback and running back positions who I accept require a modicum of speed and talent) it bores the trousers off me; it’s repetitive and so high-scoring the results often seem arbitrary. Plus the sheer absurdity of the physical dimensions of the folk who engage in the sport at a top level is so mind-boggling it's hard to feel any empathy for them as athletes.
So I chose baseball for my live sporting experience. Something about the idea of seeing a game live had real appeal: beer and hotdogs, sitting in the bleachers, trying to catch a ball when someone hits a home run; it’s the stuff movies are made of, the real authentic American sporting experience, and I wanted me a piece of the action. The timing couldn’t better, with just a couple of weeks to go in the regular season, and my visit to San Francisco coinciding with a three-game series with their long-time rivals the LA Dodgers.
My First Baseball Game
The first two games of the series had not gone the Giants way. They were low-scoring and both went in favour of the South Californian side. It wasn’t looking promising. Having spent almost three weeks travelling around the US I had had a chance to learn my stuff. And learn I had. Sports bar after sports bar I visited, selflessly, all in a bid to ensure readiness for my mission – to understand the rules by the time game day came. I was of course forced to purchase beer products from these establishments in order to spend time utilising their television facilities, but I put myself through this physical abuse in the name of learning. I even did some extra-curricular studying, sitting on patios with even more beer products (forced upon me by local store owners, I hasten to add – you just can’t say ‘no’ to these people!) studying rules on Wikipedia and scores on the MLB website. And so I was ready.
One of the first things you notice about large groups of sports fans in America is the level of general optimism. It could be argued it’s to do with the ridiculously high amount of sugar and E numbers rushing around the bloodstreams of all Americans, but I don’t think so. The quintessential American sporting experience is a much more chipper affair than a dreary Saturday afternoon in November watching a football match, surrounded by a bunch of grumpy blokes whinging about the quality of the pie-filling and shouting abuse at referees. Being a British sports fan can quite often be a depressing experience. In San Francisco by contrast, despite coming off the back of two straight defeats to their arch rivals, you still get a stadium full of happy, friendly people, who want nothing more than to enjoy a nice day out with a vast array of heart-attack inducing snacks and beverages. It’s refreshing.
I can’t fail to mention that the date was 9/11/11, exactly 10 years after the terrorist attacks on the USA, and there was an appropriate amount of respect paid, with flags, banners, relatives of some of the victims, soldiers, a flyover, and a great many nationalistic songs. I would normally be gently scathing in my reaction to Americans, well, being American, as British people tend to be to overt acts of nationalism on home soil, but this was something else, and it was moving to be a part of it all.
The game itself got underway in a massively understated way. Two pitches had occurred before anyone really realised it had started and I was keen to get involved straight away. I paid full attention and was thrilled to discover I actually knew what was going on. The studying had paid off. The first innings passed by without any scoring and I felt fully acclimatised (or ‘acclamated’ as the Americans say. Mystifying). The fans in the bleachers were friendly and the atmosphere was buoyant, if not particularly boisterous. One thing we DO do better is chants. Crowd singing didn’t extend beyond ‘let’s go Giants’ and ‘Beat LA’, but there was plenty of music played over the tannoy along with the traditional Hammond organ, and plenty of ‘audience cam’ amusement including the most bad-ass grooving popcorn-seller I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness. There were games, highlights from other matches, players stats and even an adorable piece in which the home players described their own personal anthems, which even featured some singing from one of them – a really nice touch.
In the second innings, I wondered why it was the second innings, as nothing discernible had really changed to speak of – I’m still to figure out how and why innings start and end. Some seemed to go on for an age and others flew by. Both teams scored in the second and the atmosphere picked up. The Giants’ pitcher seemed to be doing a fine job at not letting the batsmen hit many balls (get me totally being down with the lingo!), and also in his favour was the fact he was named Madison Bumgarner. Yup. Ah who am I kidding, I’m not going to go into any detail about the actual game as I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, plus almost half a year has passed since the game, but I’ll cut to the chase and tell you that we won 8-1 (yes, WE – I’m a Giants fan, dontcha know).
We absolutely crucified them!! It must have been me. They were miles better than LA who couldn’t score to save their lives and whenever they did get a good hit were despatched clinically by an almost faultless fielding performance by the Giants. Their pitchers struggled to contain the Giants’ on-form batsmen despite trying some cynical tactics which massively backfired on them, (‘walkin’ ‘em in’ according to the bronzed biker dude next to me who seemed quite happy to adopt us as fellow fans despite our total cluelessness). It was a schooling, plain and simple. How this team had lost the two previous matches to this bunch of no-hopers was beyond me!
I don’t know if I’d necessarily call baseball players ‘athletes’. There are certainly a number of them who ran pretty fast. There are others, equally, for example the popular Pablo Sandoval, who are how shall I put this? A tad rotund. He sort of walked fast, from base to base rather than ran. But he scored points so who am I to argue? Their bodies may not be their temples, but they can sure throw fast and sport a baseball cap jauntily. So from the interminable yet exciting 5th and 6th innings, suddenly it was the 7th innings stretch – I still can’t figure out what THAT was all about other than everyone got up and danced. The last two innings flew by, people left, we were sunburnt, the place was a total trash can, the sun went down, we went out for beer. A good day was had by all. Except the LA Dodgers.
To conclude, I’ve no idea why it’s taken me this long to publish this other than that I returned to normality, ice hockey and to a lesser extent football took over my life once again, and I immediately lost interest in anything baseball-related. Would I go again if I was over in the States? Absolutely. Do I actually care what’s gone in in the MLB since, or will go on this season? Not a jot. But I sure as hell enjoyed being a part of it for a short while.
