by I first saw a baseball game back in 1998, at the SkyDome in Toronto. It was, and still is, a multi-purpose stadium, used for rock concerts and all sorts. This versatility sapped the two-thirds-empty stadium of all personality. The experience was dire. It didn’t help that I had almost no clue as to what was happening. The home team, the Blue Jays, lost badly.
In 2004 I was boarding with a couple who happened to have ESPN. I was lucky enough to have the place to myself for a short time, and I couldn’t help but watch some of the (now famous) series between the Boston Red Sox and the Yankees. I couldn’t get over the Red Sox fans, how much it all meant to them, and how ridiculous their level of optimism was. Even if they miraculously came back to topple the Yankees, they still had another team to beat after that. And their supporters still believed they could do it. Which of course they did. The bloke who sat next to me on the train from Albany, NY to Toledo, Ohio (he wore a cap with a B on it, of course) happily gave me a play-by-play account of the oh-four series, including that steal.
The Red Sox struggled a bit in 2015; this made getting a ticket a bit easier. I went to the game against Kansas City on my second day in Boston, which had already been a fantastic day. I only just made it on time. Fenway Park is the oldest ground in the country, the smallest too in the major leagues, and I instantly fell in love with it. I was way back in the bleachers, but that hardly mattered. Oh wow, look at the Green Monster! And the manual scoreboard! I really like the scoreboard at the Basin, but this one is on a different level of coolness. It’s clearly hand-painted; the B’s in “At Bat”, “Ball” and “Boston” are all different (or maybe it’s a replica made from an original that was hand-painted; whatever). The scoreboard also shows the scores from matches taking place elsewhere (how come you never saw that at football matches in the UK?).
They played songs which people really got into, and there was the traditional organ music. That guy who plays the organ at Fenway, what a great job he has. There were the hot dog smells and sounds: “Hot dogs! Get your hot dogs!” I did get my hot dog and a warm Sam Adams from downstairs. Shit, did I really pay $15 for that? That’s $24 where I live. Amongst the sights, sounds and smells, there was a game going on. At least this time I knew what a double play or a stolen base was when I saw one. The Red Sox weren’t doing that well. By the middle of the sixth inning they were 5-0 down. But the crowd weren’t that bothered. It was a real party atmosphere. The names of the players got me as they flashed up on the screen. Mookie Betts. Xander Bogaerts. You have to have the right name to play baseball. The names were accompanied by a whole raft of stats. I now know what an ERA is. When we got to the bottom of the ninth, the crowd had thinned, but I was going to stay till the end no matter what. The Red Sox rallied quite strongly at the end, and there was some excitement when, trailing 6-3, they had the bases loaded with two outs. Just one big swipe for the sort of victory that kids probably dream about. There was one big swipe, but no heroics. The game was over. It took three and a half hours – the length of an average five-setter – and it just flew by. There was a wonderful bucket drummer outside and just so much joy. I haven’t seen that much live sport in my life, but that game would make my all-time top five. (The 2001 Wimbledon semis are way, way out in front.)
For interest’s sake I had a look to see how often someone has hit a walk-off grand slam home run to win by one. There are 2430 games in each regular season so in the history of baseball it must have happened a fair few times. It turns out it’s happened just 28 times total. And at Fenway, now in its second century? Zero. I could have seen history there! Never mind.
Some of the terminology in baseball is interesting. A “save” means something quite different from what I think it should mean. A “grand slam” is a very different feat from the similarly-named achievement in tennis or rugby, but at least that one makes sense to me. (I actually think of a grand slam as a sum of money, specifically $85, or one of each note that I ever see. Yes, I still use cash. I know.)
There’s something just nice about baseball. It moves at a pace that’s decidedly not 2015. For large parts of the game, not a lot happens. People have drawn parallels between baseball and Twenty20 cricket, but I’d say it’s more like Test cricket. Both sports work very well on the radio. You can listen to the commentary while doing something else, just like Dad might have tinkered under the bonnet of his car, with the baseball on in the background, in the fifties. Baseball also seems to attract interesting characters, such as Yogi Berra who died last month. Some of the stuff he came out with was pure genius. I tried to get some Yogi-isms into our last team meeting at work; I normally just sit there and say nothing.
Watching sport in Boston is extra fun because they have the best sports fans I’ve seen anywhere in the world. (Some people might use a different superlative from “best”, but I suppose I sort of am a Boston sports fan now.) I’d be on the T and two-thirds of the people in my carriage would be showing their support for one of the local teams, including me (I bought a Red Sox cap so I would fit in at the game, and wore it for the rest of my trip as a mascot, except in New York because I didn’t want to get beaten up). Support for the All Blacks, even during a World Cup like we have now, is small beer in comparison. I imagine the marathon bombing in 2013 “helped” unite the city and its sports teams. Baseball, like all major US sports, is highly commercialised. The Red Sox have an official motor oil, an official furniture store, an official hummus. Yep, official hummus. For some reason I found this hilarious.
While baseball has a lot of features I like, their football has all the elements in sport that I can’t stand, as if someone designed it just to annoy me (and it’s also dangerous). Saying that, I’d happily go to a Patriots game if someone bought me a ticket, for the experience. Basketball doesn’t really appeal to me either. Hockey though, that looks like enormous fun, and all the Bruins fans in the yellow-and-black and those huge B’s look wonderfully mad. Unfortunately hockey is a winter game and I don’t know if I’d go there at that time of year. But Boston, it’s such a beautiful city that I have to go back there some time, see at least three or four games at Fenway, and maybe get a bit closer to the action.
