Batter Up, batten down

October 23, 2024, 12:21 pm , by Richard Lutz

Time to hit the ballpark, says RICHARD LUTZ

Well, to paraphrase an online article, is it going to be palm trees or pizza? Sunny beaches or gritty streets? Will it be traffic…or traffic?

In other words, is it Los Angeles or New York come this weekend? Or in more other words, is it the LA Dodgers or the NY Yankees as they go head to head for the 12th time in baseball’s World Series?

But first, a need to a kill off a grand mis-assumption. It’s been called the World Series ever since its inception in 1903- not because of any self acclaimed global reach. But, according to urban myth, because the now defunct New York World newspaper sponsored the original bunfight.

But, is it still The American Game? The NFL is hugely popular and can fill London’s Wembley Stadium at the snap of a quarterback’s fingers. And the cultural muscle of NBA basketball carries weight, both in the professional league and the high octane college circuit.

But there’s something sweet, something nostalgic, something monumentally old fashioned and out of touch about baseball. Its uniforms are distinctly Edwardian, until recently players chewed tobacco as they played and fans stand up mid way in the seventh inning to stretch and sing the prelapsarian old tune Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Like The Commonwealth’s cricket season, the games can be way overlong. Tedious, in fact. Like watching someone watching paint dry…. but also engrossing as ball, eye, bat, body and statistics all combat minute by minute.

But, in the States, if you want to hear what folks are saying this week on the proverbial #33 bus to work (if that still exists), if it’s not the Trump/Harris election, it’s the best of seven Series between these two sporting behemoths. The Dodgers are buoyed up by a $339m annual payroll, the Yanks emptied their bank accounts with a $308m salary hit.

Money washes all over the game. The Dodgers signed a long term $700m cheque for Japanese super star Shohei Ohtani. While back on the East Coast, the Yanks are carried on the massive shoulders of native Californian Aaron Judge, who measures up well against Babe Ruth. All 6’8” of him actually. He’s banking a mere $360m over nine years.

One in ten players are from a single Caribbean island

But time and after time, when either coming to a game or, inevitably, watching it on a screen at home, certain images emerge about baseball. The crowds are overwhelmingly white, one in four players is Latino and, remarkably, 10 percent of all players are specifically from the talent heavy Dominican Republic. African American presence in the field is down to 8%. Considering black dominance in the NFL and the NBA, this has raised American eyebrows in some sectors: if sports, any sport, is reflective of a nation’s psyche, its profile, it really isn’t on the baseball diamond. It looks back not forward, many say.

But whatever happens or whoever makes it happen, it is big time. The Dodgers and Yankees have competed in the championship a dozen times. The Yanks have won eleven. It’s about the Dodgers, who New Yorkers have never forgiven for skipping town in a midnight flit from Brooklyn 66 years ago to head west. But to its credit, it also broke the racist colour barrier in 1947 by hiring war hero Jackie Robinson; it’s about the arrogance of the cash rich Yankee team that just can’t win The Big One; It’s about east v west coast. And, yes, it’s about palm trees and pizza.

And just one other thing: it’s about potentially ending on Nov 2. And that, sports fans, is just three tiny days from That Other Bunfight- the US election.