Ichiro Suzuki stands at the plate like this: side on to the pitcher he sets his feet and bends his knees slightly, he slouches back, and with his eyes fixed he raises his bat in his right hand until it's a vertical line between him and the pitcher. He draws back the bat into a very straight stance and waits. It's a very ritualistic part of batting in baseball, and Ichiro's system is very good.
He holds the Major League record for hits in a season [262 in 2004] (a hit is where you make it to a base without the fielding team committing an error) and although he had a slump last season, he is still a dangerous player to pitch to. And the question the Koreans must be asking is: why the hell did we try to pitch to him?
Ichiro batted in the two runs that won Japan the World Baseball Classic (the actual World Series) over South Korea. This, along with his many Major League accomplishments, makes him a God in Japan. It also ensures the Seattle Mariners a massive television audience.
Let me set the scene: it's the top of the tenth inning. Japan gave up a two run lead in the ninth and the game was tied. Japan got fourteen men on-base during the game and two of them are there now. Ichiro is waiting. He faces eight pitches and it wasn't even a full count: one ball and six fouls. Finally he belts one over the second-baseman and essentially wins the game (though that wouldn't come until the Koreans were all out in their innings).
I'll stop now because I can feel you readers seething. So let me just quickly say: Congrats Japan on retaining the World Baseball Champion title.
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Now to the cricket (there feel better now?). As I type this Jesse Ryder is about to get a double century in the second test against India in Napier (he's eight runs away). Given the start we had (23/3!) this is formally in the "awesome bucket".
On Twitter (everyone's favourite news service) the Tweets started out being quite depressed and have become like this.
My own selfish hope is that New Zealand wins this test so that the final one in Wellington will have some weight.
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In the middle of the night on a track in Eastern Europe Alison Shanks became an honest to goodness World Champion! And in the coolest event on the Velodrome (imho): individual pursuit.
But what's slightly awesomer than that? She is actually helping others to become great.
[Alison's] switch from netball less than four years ago and success at the Beijing Olympics last year where she surprised many to finish fourth prompted BikeNZ to seek out other female athletes, introducing its Power to the Podium programme.
This contrasts quite nicely with what the coach of the White Ferns has said about putting his players on contracts.
Gary Stead says that the players don't need contracts but instead need good support from their organisation. It's an interesting plan and, I suppose, quite a good one considering the small amount of money available to sporting bodies these days.
Oh Jesse Ryder just got his double tonne. Good work that contracted player!
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Hey, not only do South Africa get a nifty Indian 20/20 tournament, they also get a match between the Springboks and the New Zealand Māori. How cool is that? I mean, yes, it would be cooler if the NZ Māori toured New Zealand in a series against a nation like Japan or Italy or a team like the Pacific Islanders, but this'll do.
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Speaking of women blasting around a track at life-threatening speeds, I'm going to be attending the inaugural Wellington Richter City Roller Derby this Saturday. It should be a good old time, and I'll report back (with pictures!) on Monday.
Anyone who watched an American College movie from the 1980s knows that human beings can be separated into two clear sub-species: Jocks and Nerds. And much like Neanderthal and Homo Sapiens these two tribes tend to "get it on ‘cause they don't get along".
Usually the Jocks are the football and basketball players, the cheerleaders, and all their pop-collar-douchebag-fratboy friends (or munters, as I call them) and they are generally psychopaths. The Nerds are anyone else who doesn't fit societal "norms". They are the punks, the computer users, the prodigies, the homosexuals, the drug users; in short they are the Public Address readership.
The chasm between the two often seems to be sports. Nerds don't like sports and aren't very good at them. This gives the evil bully Jocks a lead in the inevitable "annual college games".
But has this really ever been the case? Why do the Jocks rule our sports media? Why would it be that you can't enjoy sports and be an intellectual?
Tom Wolfe is someone who, I would suggest, falls squarely onto the Nerd side of the board. And yet I have recently read an article (part of compendium) written by Wolfe on sport. And not just any sport, NASCAR. The article, written for Esquire magazine in the 60s, follows Junior Johnson in his final year of racing for Chevrolet (before going to Ford), and pulls no punches. It is not dumbed down for a supposedly illiterate sports fan, with run on sentences and (sometimes literally) colourful descriptions.
Ten o'clock Sunday morning in the hills of North Carolina. Cars, miles of cars, in every direction, millions of cars, pastel cars, aqua green, aqua blue, aqua beige, aqua buff, aqua dawn, aqua dusk, aqua aqua, aqua Malacca, Malacca lacquer, Cloud lavender, Assassin pink, Rake-a-cheek raspberry. Nude Strand coral, Honest Thrill orange, and Baby Fawn Lust cream-colored cars are all going to the stock-car races, and that old mothering North Carolina sun keeps exploding off the windshields. Mother dog!
Nor is the sports content dumbed down for the reader who would be sipping martinis at the club and never know of the rivalry between Ford and Chevrolet.
Anyway, these good old boys are talking about Junior Johnson and how he has switched to Ford. This they unanimously regard as some sort of betrayal on Johnson's part. Ford, it seems, they regard as the car symbolizing the established power structure. Dodge is a kind of middle ground. Dodge is at least a challenger, not a ruler. But the Junior Johnson they like to remember is the Junior Johnson of 1963, who took on the whole field of NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) Grand National racing with a Chevrolet. All the other drivers, the drivers driving Fords, Mercurys, Plymouths, Dodges, had millions, literally millions when it is all added up, millions of dollars in backing from the Ford and Chrysler Corporations. Junior Johnson took them all on in a Chevrolet without one cent of backing from Detroit.
Wolfe understands that you can be intelligent and want to read beautiful passages and, at the same time, love to watch men wrestle with 2-ton rockets as they hurtle around the asphalt.
And you know as well as I do that Wolfe isn't alone here. The best contemporary example is probably Stephen Fry. Fry is a huge Norwich football fan.
Norwich failed to stop the men of Blackpool from propelling the leathern spheroid between the uprights on 2 occasions, dang it.
That may not sound too intense until you realise he wrote this a few moments before the above:
A thousand arses. Norwich City. Boohoo. Bah. Spit. Pants, pants and more pants. Frankly one comes close to despairing.
And it's not just the football:
I know some of you will say "contradiction in terms", but gad the cricket's exciting at the moment xx
So I think we can all agree the Nerds don't actually hate sport. They really fucking love it. And not just the numbers-loving Nerds who want to work out the intricacies of sabermetrics, but also creative, artistic Nerds.
And I can't believe that people would think this. Honestly I still get "really?" when I tell people I write about sport (though not as often as when I tell people I have an honours degree in mathematics).
So why are we sold this image that sports fans are (to put it bluntly) fucking idiots? Why are our sports shows fronted by mugging idiots churning out puns and being jocular for the camera? When did this happen? And more importantly does it matter?
The Jocks seem to be happy. And the Nerds seem to be ok in their sneering contempt. But really can't we give peace a chance? No.
And why is that? Because the reverse is not true: start by telling someone that you are a fan of sport and suddenly you are placed in the munter bucket and it's a very hard thing to get out of. It's even harder if you pick a contact sport.
Even if you have known someone for a long time, telling them you like rugby can be akin to telling them you've been illegally exporting butchered puppy meat and guns to Sudanese militia. "I like rugby" apparently also means that you only drink lager, like V8s, have no idea about feminism, don't like shopping, and possibly own a book by Jeremy Clarkson.
People who like sport (whichever sport) are just like people who like David Mamet plays or people who like coffee or people who like making animated gifs. Varied but with a common interest.
So I feel it's time to recapture sports from the hands of munters. We've already done it to computers, seriously, how many of us "online folk" wear pocket protectors and shirts tucked into trousers pulled up way too high? (Although Bruce Sterling did mention a new meme at Webstock: glasses, tattoos, stickers on laptops and ironic tshirts). So why don't we try to recapture the image of a sports fan from the munters?
And if you don't like sports, that's cool too. I'm not going to make you talk about it (unless you are my poor darling, who has to put up with my long-winded rants). We'll find something else to talk about, how do you feel about Jeremy Clarkson? I hate him.
The schedules are out(pdf) and I know the keenest amongst you are already on the phone booking accommodation for that "family road trip".
Of course there are still some unknowns such as Americas 1 and 2 and the mysterious "Play-off Winner". But generally the new Eden Park will be getting a decent seeing-to hosting most of the games (9).
Naly at the Dropkicks did a good city by city rundown (check the URL for his real thoughts):
Eden Park 9, Christchurch, Wellington 7 Hamilton, Dunedin, North Harbour, Rotorua, Taranaki 3 Invercargill, Napier, Nelson, Palmerston North, Northland 2
Shafted in the deal is Tauranga. Verbatim, my initial thoughts were:
Here's my initial thought... "Roto-fucking-rua?! Are you fucking kidding me?"
Rotorua's "International Stadium" was a shithole back 05 when the Lions played there and is usually passed up by BOP who play in Tauranga's Blue Chip Stadium. Oh and Tauranga has a larger population too. Seriously WTF!?
Naturally the idea is to get those money-carrying tourists to places where they can stop and unload the most cash. And seeing that's why Rotorua exists it gets first choice.
And if you want to see the All Blacks play the best advice is to not live in the South Island. The All Blacks will play in Auckland thrice, and Wellington and Hamilton. Take that with as much smugness or anger as you will.
I suppose I feel a wee bit miffed that the last four games will be in Auckland (including the 3rd-4th playoff). But at least we've done our best to send the other possible contenders around the country (does North Harbour Stadium still only have one grandstand?).
The real kick in the sensitive bits is the 9pm start time for the big games. 8pm I could handle but 9pm is reeeeaaally just pandering of the worst kind.
Isn't it part of the "fun" of an overseas tournament? Setting the alarm clock so you can get up with a cup of cocoa and watch your team play at some godless hour (God is a 9-5 guy). At halftime you run to the kitchen to make a batch of scrambled eggs and bacon. At which point a non-sport-watching member of the whanau emerges and asks for a run-down of the game with no real interest in anything but stealing some breakfast. It sets you up for the day.
From the future to the past. Didn't the Indians look awesome as they spanked us all over the park on Wednesday?
I got home early and considered writing a glog (game log) but this particular cricket match with its stop-start action made it hard to do that.
I can tell you (from the notes I made) that at 39.4 overs into the first innings there was clear tension in the commentary box over where to put Guptil in the batting order and whether or not to call up Scott Styris. However one of the commentators (not sure which one) correctly identified Cumulonimbus clouds and knew the abbreviation was Cb.
The best sign I saw in the crowd was a guy holding up an advertisement for an Indian restaurant which he turned around revealing "[the Indian team] ate at my restaurant, jealous much?"
But when Sehwag got going it was all over. And getting his ton by hitting (world's #1 ODI bowler) Daniel Vettori for six was just mental.
Hey maybe now that Indian has the series we can win the last game? Nah, probably not.
In other exciting news (well for me), the NRL season is about to start and the Warriors WILL be wearing another throwback uniform!
There's a heritage round again and the boys are wearing a stylised version of last year's blue-and-white-V strip
By the way the nzwarriors twitter feed is pretty good if you're a fan.
As with every season I am cautiously optimistic about the Warriors.
Oh and the Super 14 is still going through the motions. yay.
"It's got a lit dance floor, dvd player, big screen, a bar, disco lights and a moon roof." The man stood proudly beside his stretch Humvee; smoking a cigarette and looking exactly like the kind of person your parents warn you not to take rides with.
He'd caught us peeking in the windows while we waited for our ride. In our defence, we were very drunk.
"Drove down from Auckland yesterday" he explained. "The girls are in the supermarket buying alcohol."
"Can we have a look inside? We're journalists" I added, tapping the media pass dangling around my neck. He grinned as he opened up the back. It was as though someone had taken a bar like Boogie Wonderland or Red Square and miniaturised it and put into the back of a truck. We showed how unimpressed we were by taking photos.
Eventually "the girls" showed up with armfuls of wine and the truck made its awkward and elongated way into the narrow, darkening streets of Wellington.
Did I mention we had been drinking?
Earlier in the day I was eating breakfast at a French café in Newtown. Outside the rain thundered down. Down is an unusual direction for rain in Wellington, usually it travels across. My phone hummed with a message from my photographer: I'm still keen, when should I meet you?
Jed is a family man and I felt bad for corrupting him. I thought that the idea of drinking dozens of exotic beers in the pouring rain would be a turnoff for him. Apparently I was mistaken. I left the café with a "Parisian" baguette stuffed in my jacket for later, a very smart move.
When I met Jed he was standing in the rain outside the main gate. We said our hellos and I noted how smart it was that the press passes had been made from water (and beer) resistant material. We lined up and exchanged large wads of cash for stacks of chips, a brilliant system devised by casinos to lessen the effects of "oh my god, how much money have I spent?!"
But why have chips when you're a journalist? For example Bennett's is an intelligent brewery that understands how the media works (i.e. we got free beer). After being told about their various beers and (oh dear god) cider, I settled on the Strong Ale – a beer for "real men", drinking anything else would make me seem like a pussy. Jed had the dark ale. Neither of these were particularly good choices for our first beer.
Don't get me wrong, both beers were strong and flavoursome and, quite frankly, very good. But mine really was deceptively strong, and Jed's was thick, like a good dark beer should be. But we would not be slowed down. We bypassed the Miller tent (yes, I believe I said the same thing "WTF? Miller?") and went to an old favourite of mine, Croucher's.
The two pretty young girls with very tanned skin strongly urged us to try the Blonde but were unsure whether or not to charge us. I felt sorry for them and we decided that we couldn't really mooch our way around the whole festival (we would still try though).
Nigel (above), told us how the Blonde was an accident, an experiment that went right but would be hard, if not impossible to repeat. For this reason they didn't bottle it, instead they have been selling it solely at festivals around the country, so I was one of a small group of people to have tried it. I don't care if this was a lie, it made me feel special, and besides it was a good beer.
In fact I may as well say it now that I only had one bad beer all day. It was so bad that I tipped it out after only drinking half. And because you're dying to know, it was the Russian Baltika. A famous Russian beer? Well that should've tipped us off straight away, and if that didn't the fact that it had just bought Carlsberg and is now "Europe's largest brewer" should have. I asked what they meant by "largest", because I'm a fucking journalist and need the fucking facts. Apparently it means they produce the most beer (another warning sign).
At some point I lose track of the chronology of the day and I am forced to rely on my #beerfest Tweets. Jed's photos were fantastic but sadly still no help. He took eight notes in total for the six rolls of film he shot.
I do remember bumping into two people who were possibly from the Hutt Times. They were asking us how much free beer we had received, they hadn't got any. We told them to try Bennett's and to go with a serious look on your face: "Oh yeah, the breweries want you to be serious". After they left we joked about how sad it was to meet people from a dying media.
Rather aptly we had met them after we had just interviewed a rather ingenious man over a Yeastie Boys' ale we purchased solely for the name. The man, whose name and company was lost when my dictaphone died Craig from BeerNZ, is doing for the brewing industry what the movie and music industries have been doing for years (but with no DRM issues). Basically he is a beer distributor, the brewers send him beer and he gets it into pubs, instead of pubs going directly to the brewer which can a pain for both parties. For example he's the distributor for Epic in the South Island. It's not a completely proven system just yet but it's a start.
This was completely different to the Kirin story. I like Japanese beer a lot. And Kirin Ichiban is one of my favourites. However, the Kirin I was drinking was from Australia. One of the major breweries owns the Kirin licence and is brewing the beer through the same process and with the same ingredients as they do in Japan. And yet… something's missing…
If you go to a Japanese restaurant and they have Kirin in the big brown bottles, this is parallel imported beer (just like the Nikes you buy at The Warehouse). But it's real Japanese beer and (for some reason) tastes better. My recommendation is that you only ever have this kind of beer.
And while I'm telling you what to drink, the best beer of the day was easily the Epic Mayhem. Luke from Epic is a beer-lebrity in these parts. I think every local brewer knew him and mentioned Epic when we were talking. I got the chance to interview him for Made From New Zealand (can't quite remember how James Stewart roped me into that one) about the general processes, what made Mayhem so good and how he was going to knock the socks off the British when he went over as guest brewer. I'll make sure to link to the video when it goes up.
I don't think I've mentioned the rain enough. This was not a sunny day. The footing had become treacherous and folks were looking for shelter. And when folks are crammed in under things can become very close and random conversations start.
We met a guy named Greg (we think it was Greg) who was a very nice guy and even politely turned down Jed's proffered chips. The Canadians were apologetic but friendly (how Canadian of them). They were also soaked to the skin and in high spirits. As were the guys in lederhosen (more on them later). While drinking another Belgian Ale we started chatting with a journalism student called Denise. Denise was also interested in how much free beer we had received. I could sense a theme.
After a long talk about journalistic ethics and statistical literacy we sent Denise off in search of a Croucher's and hopefully on the path to journalistic righteousness. I had to ask the people next to me how to spell "righteousness" for my tweet. They were wrong, but friendly. Tents in the rain don't have much room for dicks.
Speaking of dicks, we were talking to the guys in lederhosen again. Jed was taking a few snaps when these two bystanders yelled out that the lederhosen guys were "homos". At this point in the evening I had just enough to drink that I swung about and said "What?"
In hindsight I have no idea what I was thinking. I walked up to pair and started with: "These guys are having fun, drinking, sliding around in the mud (as were many others), and generally having a great time. You're the 'homo'". I don't think he was expecting this from a stranger, no less someone with a media pass dangling around his neck. He mumbled something about "sliding around too", but his fairly dry clothes said otherwise. He ended up having to listen to my berating for a while. His friend stood beside us, rolled a cigarette and grinned, so I pushed my luck.
"Is that an Atlanta Braves hat? You a fan?" I asked. He gave the head tilt that means "yes" in our part of the world. "I'm a Mets Fan, how are the Braves doing so far this season?"
"Alright" he replied, "they could do better". I smiled and nodded. It's one of my pet hates and yeah I know it was a dick-move; as you may have guessed the baseball season hasn't started yet. Anyway they posed for a photo and the Atlanta Braves fan made it one of my favourites.
In the end it seems Beerfest was a financial loss and promotional gain. The people who were there seemed to have a grand time, dancing and drinking and laughing.
The lederhosen guys;
the multiple stag parties;
the dancers;
these good old boys who had a boat laden with beer waiting for them;
the 80 year old Australian who had just met his long lost brother he hadn't seen since he was four;
the brewers;
the bar owners;
and the numerous stories we didn't hear.
All of these people will be back. And I look forward to meeting them all over again.
Masked men opened fire on the Sri Lankan cricket team's convoy in Lahore, killing six policemen escorting them and a driver. Seven players and an assistant coach were wounded.
The BBC is reporting that the gunmen used a rocket-propelled grenade to create a diversion while others fired on the convoy.
Naturally Twitter is all over it, though as the Lahore Metblog advises, some of the tweets may be little reactionary (e.g. Mi6, CIA and Mossad are behind it all). But I found this one somehow reassuring:
Back home after meeting friends for dinner. Lahorites out and about in restaurants. Lahorites find restaurants cathartic.
Meanwhile the ICC is already considering the future of Pakistani cricket, and it doesn't look good:
"It's difficult to see international cricket being played in Pakistan for the foreseeable future," ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat said in London.
"They were trained terrorists and they attacked in a planned manner. The attackers looked like Pashtuns," said Punjab province Khaled Farooq.
Then rather helpfully an angry Pakistani Minister claimed it was an act of war by India:
"The evidence which we have got shows that these terrorists entered from across the border from India," Sardar Nabil Ahmed Gabol, Minister of State for Shipping, told private Geo television. "This was a conspiracy to defame Pakistan internationally."
"This incident took place in reaction to 26/11," he said referring to the Mumbai attacks in November in which at least 170 people were killed. "It is a declaration of open war on Pakistan by India," said the minister, who is not one of the government's official spokesmen, but belongs to President Asif Ali Zardari's party.
Let's hope that all dies down soon
The Herald has a timeline of Pakistan's problems with cricket and terrorism, strangely under a headline that says "terror finds a new target". For a country that New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and England have all refused to play in or have shortened tours because of security issues, this is not a "new target". Also I fail to see how
February 2009: Pakistan hosts Sri Lanka in first test series held in the country in 14 months. The first test ends in a draw.
is a security issue.
I will leave the geopolitics to others but does this mean the end of cricket in Pakistan? No, of course not.
Even in darkest days of the Kashmir insurgency which set Pakistan and India at each other's throats you didn't see anything like this — in fact one of the signs of normal life there came from boys out in the street playing cricket.
In Afghanistan, the hardline Taliban which banned most sports appear to have been less hostile to cricket...
I've even seen Pakistani soldiers spontaneously playing cricket the harsh terrain of the Siachen battlefield beyond Kashmir, bowling a few balls in the drizzling snow under the lee of steep mountain walls.
But these attacks will almost definitely mean the end of international cricket in Pakistan for a very long time.
