May 25, 2005
Real Baseball Fans
Sam Hutcheson, resident surl, and I have often fake-argued over whether or not he is a “real” fan. He doesn’t like the All-Star Game, which is about as offensive as a Cyndi Lauper video. Sam, whom I love dearly, will sometimes not care about the playoffs or World Series depending on the teams – particularly New York teams.
Let me be clear – some people don’t care about the “other” league’s playoffs because they mostly follow the league their team is in, but Sam won’t watch a World Series if some teams are in it. Well, that’s just an offense that annoys me to rock-throwing, which I suspect is what drives Sam to maintain that position. That is difficult for me to accept. Okay – it’s on at inconvenient times so you can’t watch, but to not care? Well, I’m a better baseball fan than that.
Sam is a Braves fan, so it may just be inherent in the blood. And I know plenty of other teams not in New York don’t sell out all their playoff games, so, Mike A, let it go.
Do I have a point? Yes, and I don’t mean the one on the top of my head.
I am in Manchester, England and have been since Opening Day. I have seen about four baseball games, and all of those in the last two weeks, and had limited internet access the entire time. Even when I finally got regular access, it was “dial-up”, so I couldn’t even use my MLB.tv. I am jonesing – and not David C. - hard for some baseball.
You cannot imagine what this is like - unless you suffer from it. I generally watch, study, analyze, read about baseball every day. And for many hours. Now I am in a country that doesn’t care about baseball – but worse, the country actively tries to keep me from receiving any baseball-related information.
A few weeks ago I traveled to London to see the sites. Look, kids! Big Ben! Parliament! I rode the London Eye. I went to Westminster Abbey. I drank in SoHo. I threw pennies, er, pence, in the fountain at Trafalgar Square while my daughter splashed in puddles from one of the forty daily rainfalls. I rode The Big Bus Tour bus, riding in the open air top level and listened to a young lady regale me with the interesting tidbits of every building in London (look, that’s where Jack Nicholson likes to stay when he’s in town (the Connaught House)). I saw the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace with about 10,000 other sweaty tourists, most of who were from countries less familiar with the concept of preventing body odor than the US. I went to 221B Baker Street and visited the Sherlock Holmes Museum and Gift Shop. I purchased one of my friends back home a lovely salt-and-pepper set of Holmes and Watson. I saw Sir Walter Ralegh’s (the spelling back in the day) cell in the Tower of London. I took my picture in front of Tower Bridge (no, that’s not London Bridge, that’s the Tower Bridge). I went to Hanley’s, one of the largest toy stores in the world and strolled through Hyde Park whilst my little redhead chased pigeons, squealing as if she’d discovered the fountain of youth (and perhaps that is the key – chasing pigeons). Is there anything else I should have done?
What I did do that was better than all of that – well, all except sharing a cupcake in Hanley’s with Lindsay on her third birthday and watching her chase pigeons on a sun-drenched lawn, occasionally interrupted by a sprinkle of rain – was meet and share a beverage with a handful of baseball fans in the UK.
I walked the mile or so from my hotel to the Yorkshire Grey pub to meet BTF regulars fra paolo, philistine, Saxman, John Mazzeo and RB in the UK. Okay, RB is an American in the UK for a year, and fra paolo moved from the US about 25 year ago, but John, Saxman and philistine are from there (here).
How on Thor’s green Midgard, and say what you will about the service, England is very green, could these blokes be baseball fans? It defies logic and nature, not to mention an entire media system dedicated to eradicating any semblance of information regarding the true American sport. Even fra paolo has been there since the Reagan election (I don’t believe the two events, fra’s moving and Reagan’s America, are related).
Becoming a baseball fan, or even staying one for an extended period of time, in England requires a sense of dedication and considerable effort. To become a baseball fan means to completely rebel against everything you are taught. Okay, after six weeks here, I can see how that might not be so hard. The information still has to be made sense of – the rules, the hitting, the analysis – just isn’t something you stumble upon.
That these Brits have managed to become baseball fans, and BTF-involved baseball fans, is to be a real baseball fan. They wanted to be baseball fans and have made themselves fans. Impressive. Most impressive.
On the other hand, two are/were Expos fans. I suppose the Expos were “England’s team” first, and I guess Toronto is now. The other two are Yankees fans, so I’m not sure they deserve that much credit. It’s about like me going out and buying a Man. U. t-shirt. Oh, wait…
Chris Dial
Posted: May 25, 2005 at 07:23 PM |
21 comment(s)
Related News:
Reader Comments and Retorts
Go to end of page
Statements posted here are those of our readers and do not represent the BaseballThinkFactory. Names are provided by the poster and are not verified. We ask that posters follow our submission policy. Please report any inappropriate comments.
I'll be in the UK myself for two weeks this summer. I imagine I won't get to follow much baseball either.
The internet is a wonderful thing though: through Fanhome's Strategy and Sabermetrics forum (where Tango and MGL have been posting for a very long time), Rob Neyer then later Prospectus and Primer, there's always been somewhere to read about the game from a saber perspective. And I must have single handedly kept Amazon afloat in the early years, ordering boatloads of books to travel over the pond. The tricky bit was actually seeing any action!
Now I get home every day from work and my first thought is to check mlbtv to see if there's a game on. It's incredible to have this available to me, I'm pretty overwhelmed. Hurray!
I'll be back in England as of this Saturday. If anyone's arranging anything, let me know.
Rich
I agree that MLB.TV has been the major saving grace of being a foreign fan, along with (to a lesser extent) NASN. The scheduling of games remains a frustration, as there only regularly seem to be afternoon games on Wednesdays and at the weekend. Waking up 30 minutes earlier to run through the recaps and browse something like ESPN Motion sometimes doesn't seem worth it, but it does appear by far the most straightforward way of remaining sane.
Even with the internet, I still only see, on average, one Yankee game every couple of weeks (damn you, social life!), although if there are other teams playing in the afternoon I'll often tune in - particularly if I have a fantasy baseball stake in them. It seems one area where I'm 100% with the purists: more afternoon games! In fact, an occasional World Series afternoon game at the weekends could do wonders for international viewership, at least in Europe.
As for how we foreigners end up this way . . . My Manhattan cousins took me to see the Yankees host Toronto in September 1997 (Hideki Irabu on the mound!). 6-5 Yankees. I was hooked. One game can be all it takes.
Which burg, Rich? We haven't made plans for the long weekend yet (due to a lack of availability of decent hotels in Dublin).
The early 1990s were difficult, too, because the game disappeared from non-subscription television. It was really the 1996 Internet boom that started make baseball available on a consistent and regular basis to the expatriate. I still remember the delight when I discovered the webcasts of games - even though it was on a dial-up 56k modem, and not nearly as smooth a listening experience as today's broadband.
BTW, Chris, no way has Toronto become England's team. English fans either leap on the bandwagon of whichever was the good team when they first really got interested, or they pick a team based on places they know and love in the US or Canada. philistine nearly became a Marlin, because his interest in the game really took off in 2003.
We could try for another meet-up in England. Perhaps if we start planning next week. There are real-live baseball games here, maybe that would be a good focus for an outing. Croydon Pirates anyone?
Paul, I'd agree on your take about how foreigners pick teams. My first trip to the States was to NY & Yankees & Mets games seemed to be on every night. The Mets had players I liked - Straw, Doc and Carter, but the Yankees had the history (what little I knew) and they were a bit crappy. That was enough for me.
What I do find different about baseball is that I have a lot less dislike for other teams than I do for example in football (soccer). I cannot stand hundreds of teams in football; Liverpool, Arsenal, Man U, Newcastle, Celtic, Real Madrid, Leeds, Palace, Preston, Sheffield United, etc. etc. and I only really like Chelsea. I do have some vague acceptance of various other teams either due to their quality of football; Ajax, Barca, Boca, or their connections to Chelsea or friends of mine; Millwall (while Wisey was there), Stoke, Southampton, Fulham (before Fayed bought them). In comparison, the only baseball team I really cannot stand is the Braves (and possibly the Orioles, but that's solely due to Ripken) whereas I like the Phils, the A's, the Mets, the Astros, the Twins, the Indians... I've got a few thoughts about why that is but I think this post is long enough.
Don't like the all-star game? Check.
Sometimes don't care about the playoffs, depending on who is playing? Check.
To me, the joy and beauty of baseball is the regular season, the unfolding drama over 162 games and 6 months of play. Even when your team is out of it early (and my team often was out of it early), there were always little sideplots among the individual players to follow (the development of Vladimir Guerrero. The sustained and unappreciated brilliance of Tim Raines. The development of Javier Vazquez from "rushed to the majors" to "frontline SP, etc). And when the team did contend, suffering through the long down periods made the contending seasons that much better by contrast (the end of 1993, leading in to 1994 were great fun, moreso because of the collapse in 1989 and the struggles of 1990. Following that team as it matured and developed from 1990-1994 was one of the most rewarding experiences a fan could ever have - crushed by the strike and what happened afterwards)
the worst 3 days of the summer are the all-star break, because there's no real baseball to watch/listen to/read about. The all star game is not a baseball game, it's an exhibition and exercise in celebrity. Can't stand it. The playoffs aren't a whole lot better - the better team over 162 games is the better team, not the team that manages to win a string of 5 or 7 game series. The Red Sox might have won the World Series last year, but the Yankees were the best team in the AL in 2004.
I had a similar experience trying to keep up with the EPL in the "provincial" US in the early 90s. Running to the Library every day to get the Sunday Times to read about Monsieur Cantona and the mighty Red Devils.
Thank God for sattelite TV and the Internet. makes life much easier.
And I agree with D.E.F. The beauty of baseball is the regular season. Following the statistics of players and fortunes of teams you don't really care about. The daily grind is the best part. The All-Star game makes for two days with no baseball and one day with fake baseball. Yuck.
You'd think I would learn to only run there ONE day of the week, but no...
Croydon Pirates?! Ha, many's the sunday afternoon I spent doign battle with their AAA equivalent, the Pie-Rats. Well, not many, possibly three, but anyway.
We played all over the south east, the worst was some game on a Cambridgeshire airbase: we were playing a crack side of 15 year old military brats. Some parent was shouting "swing batter batter swing" for the entire double header (And double headers in England really can last a long time - pitching duels are rare!). His son and teammates were as annoyed as we were.
Anyway...
I get releas...er I fly home on Wednesday June 1!!
Woohoo!!! Er, I'm sorry to leave a such a fine country.
Yes - to me every WS game - regardless of thescore - and every close playoff game is like that.
Baseball isn't what I like - it's what I breathe
I don't like the All Star game and haven't voted for players in years. I try to catch all the WS games, but have blown off some playoff games and series in my times.
That is my life. Being in America is a dream for me following baseball, as it is everwhere.
Some days away from the internet at home are painfull. Where as here, you just 'turn on the news' and it is there!!
A couple of things that might be of interest. If you're living in a house or flat with cable or satellite TV, the abovementioned NASN is a Godsend. Hell, they're even showing the College World Series at the moment.
And the next time you're in London, head back to Soho (the 'h' is lower case over here). Bodean's has its sets tuned permanently to NASN, which generally means nine or ten live or tape-delayed games a week. The food's surprisingly decent, too.
My sources for "moving pictures" of that beloved Sport were those rare movies, much later the internet-streams in low quality.
From this point, the "exhibitional" character of the All-Star-Game or the playoffs seems to me as a kind of a luxury problem ;)
...don't mention german Baseball...or i'm forced to mention your soccer-guys. ;)
You must be Registered and Logged In to post comments.
<< Back to main