Fear of the Unknown

We need to address something--a subject that nobody is really willing to cover, one that, quite frankly, anybody wants to even begin researching. It's confusing, a little bit scary, and downright foreign to nearly everybody in America. I am, of course, talking about the game of cricket. Cricket, as you may or may not know, is somewhat similar to the great American Pastime of baseball in that it is played with a ball and a bat. Someone throws that ball, and the person with the bat tries to hit said ball. Aside from that, the two sports have about as much in common as Kathy Bates and a treadmill. Cricket is one of the most popular sports played here in Australia, stemming once again from their British roots. And since at one point in history the sun never set on the British Empire, the sport is also very popular in India, South Africa, and various small island nations. And of course Britain.

What really gets me though, is how long these friggen games are. After a considerable amount of exposure to the sport in my few months here, I never EVER want to hear somebody complain that an NFL or baseball game is too long. Like all things British, cricket is very proper, and thus quite dry and pedantic. It is also the only sport I know of that has a lunch break. No, I'm not kidding, they literally have snack time. The reason that other sports don't have a lunch lady is because they don't take eighteen and a half hours to play.  I wouldn't be surprised if they even rolled out mats and blankies and took a quick nap, too. Of course the NFL and NBA have halftime, and baseball has the 7th inning stretch, but an entire lunch? Come on guys. I imagine in my head a long oak table adorned with the finest silver cutlery, butlers serving roasted lamb shanks on a bed of cous-cous, accompanied by shouts of "Hazaa!" and "Right o chap!" Wash it all down with a quick scotch, check to make sure that your mustache is straight, and then it's back out to the oval!

There are several things that I find befuddling about cricket as a baseball player. Firstly, there are no balls or strikes. You can also, as a batter, take as many swings as you like, provided that the ball does not hit the wooden wickets behind you, or someone catches the ball you hit in the air. The batter can hit the ball and not even run! Imagine Derek Jeter at the plate, rolling over a ground ball to 3rd base, and saying "nah, you know what, I don't really like that one, I'm gonna re-do it." Also, there is no fair or foul territory in cricket. Any direction that the ball goes is acceptable, and since it is played in the middle of a large oval, this means that what would normally be a souvenir for a fan at a baseball game is now a good enough hit to run back and forth across the field. Lastly, and this is my biggest issue--there is entirely way too much celebrating in cricket, even for average, anticlimactic feats such as getting a batter out who has not scored many runs. Usually you can find a fielder who has caught the ball in the air tossing it back up from whence it came, but many times this is also accompanied by a cute little jump which echos in your mind phrases such as "yipee!" and "hoo-ray!" Of course my favorite is the giant group hug, where everybody comes in real tight and embraces one another, presumably to check their teammates for a hernia and make sure that each others' aftershave is still fresh. This behavior is enough to make T.O. blush.

Woo-hoo!

 

 

 

OMG you guys good job!

I must mention, however, as an American AND the rightful owner of a Business Marketing degree, what cracks me up the most about cricket is the largest national sponsor. And that would be none other than the deep southern favorite--KFC. It isn't that this fast food restaurant, who is largely responsible for the obesity crisis in America, managed to worm its way down here and take a strangle hold on an entire sport that shocks me. What shocks me are ad campaigns that boast such claims as "it's just not cricket without the Colonel." Really? Without greasy fried chicken this proper British game just wouldn't be the same? I'm sorry, but when I picture the Colonel, I think of a Mark Twain looking fellow riding a horse through a tobacco plantation, licking whiskey off his mustache and a six-shooter on his hip. I don't picture him in sipping tea through bad teeth and discussing opera with his chaps. Call me a traditionalist, but something just seems so off about the whole matchup, and whoever landed KFC this massive account probably has since retired with a massive bonus, and eats fresh exotic fruit off the body of naked Brazilian supermodels for breakfast. Or something like that...

Something's wrong here...

Life Down Under is Looking Rightside Up

Hello Friends. In the middle of December I abruptly packed my bags and hopped on a plane (well, actually three of them) and ended up in Brisbane. My purpose while here? I have been fortunate enough to be able to continue playing baseball with the Redlands Baseball Club, an organization whose teams (there are quite a few levels) play all over the greater Brisbane area. If you aren't sure where that is, it's here. Seeing as how Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, it is currently their summer (yes, the toilets flush the other way. No, it isn't that cool).

What I couldn't have ever expected to be greeted with was the bludgeoning of rain that ensued for nearly a month after my arrival. Of course, all this was ironic as I had just left Seattle in the dead of winter to come to one of the hottest and sunniest places on the entire planet. Naturally, everybody blamed me for bringing it from Seattle, a city whose reputation preceded me "Oi Seattle mate? Isn't that that one movie with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks where it rains all the time?" Thanks guys.

Fortunately, right after the floods which you undoubtedly witnessed on the news, the sun seemed to work overtime, as if to say "look, I know I haven't been around much, and I really want to try and be a better sun, so I'm going to do whatever it takes to make things right." And make right the sun has indeed done. It still took a solid week and a half for most of the baseball fields to dry out, but we're on the field now and that's what matters. But in those few weeks where I did almost nothing but stare out the window and wonder if I were on a filming of "Punk'd--The Movie," I had a good deal of time to draw upon some interesting observations about this land, an area of the world that quite frankly gets little global attention. Perhaps it's because it sits in the world's hip pocket, tucked way down here next to tiny little islands like Fiji and Indonesia, but this is a fascinating place, and what fascinates me the most is the degree of separation between the shocking similarities and the delicate differences between here and home.

Most of us know that Australia was majorly populated by means of the British sending their prisoners here. What most people don't know is that contrary to popular belief, these prisoners were not sent here because they were extra naughty or because the jails in mother England were too crowded. These criminals were sent here because they were in fact the poorest. In an attempt to clean out the lower class, the Brits were sending people away for things like stealing cucumber plants and downloading pirated episodes of "So You Want to be a Millionaire?" So even on the worst of days, Australians have a great reason to be happy, because as their forefathers were treated like dejected pieces of table scraps, they ultimately ended up laughing last because they of course went on to form their own government and now hold in their possession one of the largest countries on the planet--which of course is full of little treats like gold and oil. Hey, Britain, uh, can you say fumble? Go sit on the bench next to France, they're still hanging their head over the Louisiana Purchase.

But what really gets me about this place is the fact that the streets look the same. The shopping centers, the parking lots, and the freeways look the same (aside from the fact that they drive on the other side of the road). They have a lot of the same fast food, and they love their V8 muscle cars and there are a lot of pickup trucks. They live in suburbs next to parks and schools. They love watching CSI and The Simpsons. And with all that, sometimes it's easy to forget that you are on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, whose neighbors used to eat other human beings just 50 years ago. You try to imagine this area without all the white people and the big buildings, and you really start to understand that this is in fact a wild place. Here, you must learn to share your family room with a gecko, and as long as that giant spider in the bathroom isn't blue, you're good to go.  But, far more interesting are the subtle differences, which will now be rattled off in a list for your reading pleasure:

-Swearing is not a big deal here.
-Man people like to drink "piss" on the weekend, and indulge to the extent that they get "blind"
-You don't eat dinner. You have tea. Not the drink. Tea is dinner.
-A lot of people only drink one type of alcohol. The number one question I get is "what do you drink?" Uhhhh, everything?
-There are these awesome, low trucks that many, many people drive, much like an El Camino, and they are called "utes" (short for utility)
-Australians shorten every word or phrase that they can. Example: "I'm tired as" "I'm sore as". As what?
-Feel free to use the word c*nt as freely as you would like. I've said it more times in the last two months than I have in my entire life.
-Much like the rest of the world, Australians get much more vacation time than we do
-There is a bunch of stuff here that can easily kill you. Bugs, animals, jellyfish, the desert. The bloke next to you in the pub who supports the other rugby team. Be careful.
-You don't ask someone how they are doing. You ask them how they are going.

It's a crazy, beautiful place. Stay tuned for more.