Cod Almighty | Article

by Andy Holt

20 May 2004

I've been in New York two weeks now. I thought the adjustment would be easy, you know. I've lived in London for almost eight years and one big city's just the same as another, right? And nowhere is that truer than in London and New York, yeah?

No. Wrong. They're different. Shops are different, traffic is different, people are different; there are advert breaks right after the opening credits on television shows. After two weeks I wanted, no, needed to find something that felt familiar. Sport, I thought, familiar ground. I'll go to a baseball game.

Checking the fixtures list I found that the New York Yankees were hosting the Seattle Mariners on Sunday. Surely an omen. What better way for a Grimbarian abroad to feel at home than to go see the Mariners play?

So, last Sunday, in brilliant sunshine and accompanied by Jesse Guittard in a reciprocal arrangement to that which saw him watching our version of the Mariners on three occasions last season, we boarded the 4 train at 5First and Lexington and made our way up into the Bronx.

A bit of background here. The Yankees are the Chelsea of baseball. Unlike other American sports there's no wage cap, and so they've assembled a team of superstars with no expense spared. Like Chelsea, though, this doesn't make them infallible. The Yankees are also one of the biggest sports 'brands' in the world. When, a few years ago, the New York Yankees signed a joint merchandising deal with Manchester United, which meant they would stock each other's goods in their outlets, it was truly a signal of intent. The big two saw an opportunity to form a partnership that would achieve global domination. So the Yankees are the baseball equivalent of Manchester United and Chelsea rolled into one. It's clear why everyone except Yankees fans hates them. Jesse included.

American sport is characterised by both the great distances teams have to travel and also the huge numbers of games a season entails (the regular baseball season involves each team playing 162 games between April and the end of September). One way the authorities address these issues is to stage mini-series within the season. Sunday was the final match in a series of three that Seattle were playing in New York. Friday evening saw the Yankees win 9-5. On Saturday the Mariners won 13-7 in the 13th inning. And so this was what American sports commentators like to call the rubber match. A little bit of kudos was at stake here. OK, so given a 162-match season, it's a very small bit of kudos, but it matters, OK?

After buying a couple of tickets we made our way up, and up and up, to our seats way up in right field. Near the top. We could see absolutely everything that was going on.

The whole experience was so far from what I'm used to. I like most sports. I will happily sit and watch almost any sport on the television at any time. And if I go to a sports match I go for the game. What surprised me was that Sunday afternoon was not like that. True, it was a glorious Sunday afternoon, so there'd be some New Yorkers there who probably wouldn't go on a chilly Tuesday evening; but even so, going to the baseball seems more like a social event.

At any time of day or night in the USA you can usually find on cable at least five from a selection of baseball, basketball, ice hockey, American football, football, arena football, billiards (pool to you and me), ten-pin bowling, golf, lacrosse and wrestling; and every person I've met can talk in great detail and with great authority on at least three of that list. So at the baseball game, the almost incidental nature of the actual baseball shocked me. The main idea seemed to sit and eat and drink. Groups oared to the one the previous day. Well, I say uneventful. Judging from comments from people around me it was a good pitching display. A good pitching display does not make an entertaining game for the novice to watch though, I'm afraid. True, I wasn't a complete novice - I had the Playstation game - but I still wanted to see people tonking the ball all over the shop. But it wasn't to be.

I did see some hits though. In the bottom of the 3rd the Yankees catcher, John Flaherty, homered to left field, almost fouling out, to give the Yanks a one zip lead. And yes, I do understand that sentence. In the next New York inning a guy called Tony Clark had a hit that allowed one of his team-mates to make it home. That's called a RBI, you know.

Inning after inning passed before Seattle finally got on the board. In the top of the eighth Mariners' Scott Spiezio hit a home run of his own to make it 2-1 and make things a bit more interesting. Sadly, that was all they could achieve, and the rest of the 8th inning and then the 9th passed without further incident. I had travelled 3,500 miles to watch a team of Mariners go behind early by two with little resistance before showing a bit of fight, pulling a score back to get the crowd's hopes up, and then ultimately rolling over with barely a whimper. Maybe New York's not so different after all.