There is a small but fantastic moment in the Simpsons episode 'Duffless', in which Homer gives up beer for a month, where he goes to a baseball game and, surrounded by hordes of obviously inebriated fans and visibly bored, he declares, 'you know, until now I never realised just how boring this game is!'
In Los Angeles recently in the middle of a post-ironically Kerouacean American roadtrip, I decided on a whim to take in a dose of baseball, that most American of past-times (although it was originally imported by Irish immigrants, as well you know). As it turns out, Homer, as ever, is right on the money.
The fixture was between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, making it, in American terms at least, something of a local derby, and the atmosphere inside elegant Dodger Stadium was suitably electric, but, sadly, the match itself was totally devoid of excitement. It finished 1-0 to the Dodgers, with the solitary score coming at the last possible opportunity before sudden death, and even then only because the Padres' pitcher threw enough foul balls for a Los Angeles player to make it all the way around. Until that point, virtually nothing had happened to speak of; it was a full 90 minutes into the action before anyone even connected with the ball sufficiently to make it to first base, which elicited rapturous applause from the fans, who all went home apparently satisfied after the game, suggesting perhaps that, rather than being merely an unusually dull match, this was
par for the course, to mix sporting metaphors, in baseball.
One of the reasons Americans have traditionally rejected the two most popular sports in the rest of the world, football and cricket, is that they can't fathom the concept of a draw. The idea that two sides should be locked in battle only to go home without a winner being crowned is anathema to a country that is sustained by the legacy of the revolutionary war, demands acquistiveness from its citizens in every facet of their lives, and has produced the WWF. Stalemates in Major League Soccer are therefore decided by penalty shootouts. Baseball renders this logic more than a little absurd - it would seem that it doesn't matter how torturously dull the action is, so long as there's a conclusion to it, American sports fans are satisfied.
It can't be a coincidence that virtually all the peripheral innovations in sports stadiums, namely oversized foam gloves, beach balls, Jumbovision and, above all, drinking copious amounts of alcohol, were invented, or at least popularised, in baseball; anything, it would seem, to distract the crowd's attention from the fact that nothing is happening on the field. Apparently Manny Ramirez, the Dodgers' star player, shares my view, since, only a few days after this game, it was revealed that he has been taking performance-enhancing drugs, presumably in an attempt to inject a much-needed sense of adventure into proceedings.
It was difficult, sitting there, not to feel that cricket, in many ways baseball's closest relative (apart from rounders, which at the end of the day it is just a glorified version of), is a far superior game on every level.
A major advantage cricket has, in my eyes, concerns baseball's insistence on confining the various aspects of the game to specialists - the only people who bat, pitch or field are the specialist batters, pitchers and fieldsmen. One of Test cricket's great joys is watching the players have to do, and especially succeed at, things they are patently not cut out for - the moment of breathless trepidation when you realise butter-fingered Monty Panesar is underneath a skied catch; the moment of amusement as New Zealand's hopeless tailender Chris Martin faces up to a fiery fast bowler; the moment of sheer unexpected ecstasy when one of Michael Vaughan's dibbly-dobbly deliveries dismisses the great Sachin Tendulkar. Baseball lacks an equivalent to these, meaning that, although the contest is always between players of a high standard, it can feel somehow sanitised, manufactured, even artificial.
I am doubtless being very unfair to the sport. As I mentioned, it could of course have been just a particularly boring game. I would hate for somebody to be baptised into football by watching a goalless snoozefest between, say, Bolton and Stoke (apologies to fans of those teams, but come on, admit it...)
I'm sure, to the initiated, there were a great deal of nuances and tactics going on that made the whole thing very intriguing, but if so, to the newcomer they were undetectable. That is the same in other sports, however - if you're already well-versed in the game you appreciate and even admire a gutsy rearguard action that yields a goalless draw, but you only fall in love with football when you watch, for example, Liverpool and Chelsea's thrilling 4-4 draw in the recent Champions League quarter final.
Despite the torpor on the field, the whole evening was nonetheless a great experience. The friendly atmosphere in and antiquated charm of the stadium, the good-humoured fans, the food, the scenic backdrop of the Hollywood Hills, and the warm temperature all combined to produce a thoroughly enjoyable outing, and it was fun to watch the coaches issue instructions to their charges in that mysterious sign language of theirs. I'm just not sure that I, or indeed the world beyond American and Japan, will ever fall in love with baseball.
