Some Sort of Team Sport

"Oh baby, oh baby, yes!"
The ball comes in from right field. Sosa, I think, throws it hard
towards the plate.
"Oh baby, oh baby, no!"
The play is going to be tight. The runner slides, the catcher moves,
the ball is lost. I can't see fully what's going on. The man is ...
OUT! Inning over, New York up by four over Chicago.
"Oh baby, great play."

The man behind me -- is he a typical New York baseball fan? I have
been pondering this since he started up with his "Oh baby" routine when
the first pitch was thrown. Al Leiter threw that pitch and he's been
toasting Cubbies ever since. A couple of walks, one or two hits but
everyone's favourite bridesmaids are not on form tonight. So, I've
travelled a good few thousand miles to see, ahem, my team go down
without even a whimper. Cheers, guys.

But I'm not complaining. This is baseball. This is New York. Combine
the two and you have a mix more potent than any other sporting
combination. Maybe baseball in Chicago would run it close, especially
baseball at Wrigley Field, but I'm not in a position to say. Wrigley is
at 1060 W Addison, I know that much. It's in The Blues Brothers and
Ferris Bueller caught a foul ball on the third base line there. I saw
it on TV last season and saw pitcher Steve Trachsel get a double late
on because the Los Angeles fielder got tangled in the ivy. The Cubs won
that game 4-3 in the twelfth, Sosa hitting a two run homer with two
outs on a full count. There's no Chicago magic in the windy stadium
tonight.

Shea Stadium, Queens. I was told it was a doughnut of a place, lacking
atmosphere, supporters and any semblance of friendliness. I can't
comment on the friendliness; as I'm wearing a blue cap with a red peak
and a large red 'C' on it I doubt I fit in too well with the NY-capped
locals. A large number of them, including the most voracious shouters
of "Yankees Suck!" seem to have their more famous city rival's hats on.
Strange.

No supporters. The ground is less than a third full and there are no
other sporting distractions around and, looking at Queens as the train
hammered its way over here, I'm not convinced there are many
distraction of any other kind. But the Mets aren't the Yankees as
anyone who's watched the New York news and seen wave after wave of news
about the Bronx Bombers. The Mets reports sometimes forget to mention
the score. Even my guidebook to New York is against them: "... even if
you know nothing about the game you'll know that Shea Stadium is
soulless compared to Yankee Stadium".

Maybe you have to know nothing to think that. I threw myself against
the window of the train when I first saw Shea Stadium glowing in the
early evening dusk. The green, green grass illuminated by the strong
lights and the blue of the stadium standing against the grey sky. There
is something about a baseball field just as there is something about
the game of baseball.

I'm a late starter. Even in Britain you know the names: Babe Ruth, Ty
Cobb, Willie Mays. You just don't know what they mean and no-one ever
kept me awake telling me stories of the Black Sox, although Dad did
detail to me the last game the Busby Babes ever played on native soil
and the story of Arsenal 4 Manchester United 5 will live with me
forever.

But baseball was something else, a total enigma. Channel 4 showed
basketball and American football and I'd seen ice-hockey from the
British leagues on BBC1 many times but baseball. 'Glorified rounders'
was what we called it and that's how I saw it until ...

... one night, unable to sleep, I stayed up watching one of Channel
5's early broadcasts of the game and saw a game so one-sided that most
of the ground had emptied by the bottom of the sixth. But I stayed up
and savoured every moment, every play. I was hooked.

And now I'm in New York and no-one can tell me that this place doesn't
have a soul. So there are vast spaces where the people should be -- so
what? I'd rather have a crowd that cared than any other kind.

"Oh, baby", the guy behind me starts again, "I'm telling you, Chicago
is baseball." I'd've thought such words were sacrilege in the town
where, over a hundred years ago, two teams called New York played the
first organised baseball match. Now there are two teams called New York
and two called Chicago and the man behind me is explaining to his
friend, who has also been drinking beer, why Chicago is baseball and
New York is not.

"I mean," he says, "they don't win anything and they still go. That's
baseball."

It dawns on me that this man could not ever support the Yankees and it
is for people like him that the Mets exist. Long before I knew about
the Curse of the Bambino, designated hitters and double plays, I knew I
didn't like the Yankees. I knew they were not for me. I'm thinking this
as the Cubs come to bat at the top of the fifth, 4-0 down and out of
the game. I'm thinking about why the Cubs came to be my team ...

... it's all down to Field of Dreams. When I saw it I decided that,
should I ever like baseball, the Chicago White Sox would have to be my
team. It just so happened that papers in England at the time did not
print Mets, Yankees, Cubs or White Sox after the names of the cities
so, wanting to be National rather than American, I half-followed the
fortunes of Chicago (NL) not knowing I'd picked the wrong one. I
realised too late but now I don't care. To rephrase the Mets fans: the
Sox suck, let's go Cubs.

Let's go Cubs. C'mon boys. Please.
Six-nil we lost yesterday and now I'm back with my Uncle watching
another insipid performance from the visitors to the Big Apple.

"This is Shea -- No Hard Hats Required" according to the sign. The
Yanks, the boys from the Bronx, were here earlier; watched by 45,000
they ripped into Anaheim in their first 'home' visit to Queens since
1975. I watched on TV as they half-raised the apple to celebrate Darryl
Strawberry's homer and then remembered that the man is no longer a Met
and so back down the oversized glowing fruit went.

The Yanks are the team the Mets -- and possibly no other team in
baseball -- can ever be. Confident and in charge, everyone outside
America knows the Yankees even if they don't know baseball. There's a
poster up in various locations around New York advertising the Mets. On
one of them in Queens someone has scrawled "Bring Back the Dodgers".
The Yankees don't even have to advertise.

Six-nil we lost yesterday. According to the New York Post the Cubs
have gone scoreless for seventeen consecutive innings. I count them up
as I watch out after out after out. The Mets go 2-0 up. I don't want to
see the Cubs win any more, I just want to see them score. I want them
to give me a memory.

Sosa steps up.
The ball is flying deep.
Deep and hard.

To the silence of Shea Stadium, Sammy Sosa scores a home run. No
bright, oversized apple is raised, not even halfway. No sirens, no
cheers, just my startled applause. I am grinning like a fool, thanking
Sammy, thanking the Cubs, thanking them even though the ungrateful
buggers go on to lose 2-1.

Two-one following six-nil. Hardly the stuff of which dreams are made.
Neither game a classic. But as if it mattered.

It's late at night now, actually the small hours of a tomorrow
morning. I just connected to WGN Radio over the internet to hear the
commentator scream, "And Sammy is sitting with the Babe!" and I let out
a cheer, louder and purer than any emitted at Shea earlier in the
year.

Now the Cubs and the Mets are charging for a Wild Card place and those
two games played to an empty stadium could prove vital for New York and
damning for Chicago. And Sammy, and Sammy ... I can say I saw one of
his home runs in the season when he and Mark McGwire fought like titans
for the honour of being the King of Swing. That alone is worth whatever
it cost to get my sorry hide to New York for two games in Spring.

I can see the ball sailing now. I can see it going deep. I can see it
all.