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Wednesday 16 May 2012

The Idiocy of Sports Nationalism

Friday, 13th March 2009

Daniel Larison is correct:

This lack of understanding is the crucial part in any tiresome exercise in sports nationalism: “Our manly sport has subtlety and form, and it reflects the true nature of the universe, whereas their stupid children’s game is pointless and boring.”... Europeans can make the same boredom charge against baseball (and they have), we can say it about soccer or cricket (and we have), and no doubt almost everyone outside Canada has said it about curling (but not, I think, about hockey!).

As a teenage curler myself I cannot let it be said that only our Canuck friends appreciate the Roaring Game or, more seriously, that it lacks drama. But the point is well taken nonetheless. It always ~~surprises~~ saddens me how partisans of Sport A decry any attention being given to Sport B, let alone their bone-headed insistence that Sport B is no sort of sport at all. Scottish football journalists are amongst the worst for this sort of thing, treating every other sport (apart from golf, but especially rugby) as an absurdity that no sensible person would or even should be interested in.

And Britishers are as guilty as our American cousins. The lively debate in the comments to this post makes it clear that there are plenty of people under the misapprehension that baseball is but a glorified version of rounders. For my part I think any real cricket fan is likely to appreciate baseball if given sufficient opportunity to do so. Equally so should baseball fans be able to appreciate cricket if, again, given time and a helping hand from someone who already loves the game. t the risk of arguing from authority, let me cite Thomas Boswell, the Washington Post's veteran and well-regarded baseball columnist. Boswell had the good fortune to attend the fifth day of the 1984 Lords test between England and the West Indies. The following day - which happened to be July 4th - he made this quasi-treasonous admission:

"I came with an open mind but a suspicion that I would despise the world's slowest team sport... However, instead of coming away a mocker, I now suspect it's lucky for me that I don't live in England. There's a cricket nut trapped somewhere deep inside me; stop me before I become addicted again.
Why wouldn't I get the habit? Cricket is, in many ways, baseball raised to the nth degree. Almost every basic tendency or theme of baseball is mirroried or exaggerated in cricket.... I am titillated by the thought that cricket might be a heightened form of baseball.. If anything, cricket's bowling is even more complex than baseball's pitching, just as cricket's batting is a more encyclopedic sort of acquired skill than hitting a baseball..."

This isn't to argue the superiority of cricket over baseball, merely to observe that they share an awful lot. If forced to choose between them I would pick cricket, but if I could only watch baseball I would not be too grievously deprived. And of course one does not have to choose. One can have both. As I say, I consider cricket a more varied, nuanced game than baseball but in each of them the sense of what might or could be about to happen is a vital component of the appeal. Baseball is, in one sense, a concentrated form of cricket. They are cousins, not competitors. Americans should think of a five day cricket match as being a seven game baseball series. For my part I'd rather spend three hours watching a baseball game than a Twenty20 cricket match.

Similarly, I prefer rugby to American football (in large part because, of course, it's the sport I grew up playing and watching) but that doesn't require one to forsake the gridiron. Indeed I've written about my love of college football and it's one of the things I miss most about living in the United States. (Go Blue!)

All of which is to make a simple point and ask for a tiny merc: could hacks on either side of the Atlantic think twice before indulging in infantile, cliched, witless, tedious "critiques" of the sports enjoyed on the other side of the ocean. Is it really too much to ask that you try and learn something about a sport before dismissing it completely? Silly question. Of course it is.

Which reminds me: more on baseball as the new season approaches and I have a post on American cricket that needs to be written too. Some time soon...

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ndm

March 13th, 2009 4:28am Report this comment

Ex Times and Wall Street Journal editorialist Tunku Varadarajan had a fun article on going to Lords in the Wall Street Journal last year. It starts:

-- When a friend of mine -- let's call him Manhattan Man -- told me that he was going to Yankee Stadium for a game, I couldn't help but think that an outing such as his would drive some English friends of mine to suicide.

-- This is not a comment on baseball, which is not a bad game, really. It is an observation on the way two societies -- America and England -- watch their respective national sports. All Manhattan Man had to look forward to was a prolonged exposure to Bud Light and soggy wieners. I, on the other hand, just back from London, where I'd spent two days at Lord's cricket ground -- which is not merely cricket's Mecca, but also its Vatican, Jerusalem and Benares rolled into one hallowed stretch of turf -- had watched sport in such delicious circumstances as to make Manhattan Man swoon with envy.

-- Here, for the record, is what happened at Lord's.

The rest is worth reading.

Fergus Pickering

March 13th, 2009 9:37am Report this comment

Baseball IS glorified rounders. That isn't a slur. It's a description. Present day cricket is a glorified version of the game played by the Hambledon men. The only sport NOT glorified is football which used to involve whole villages and resulted in maiming and death, not the big girls' blouse of a thing we have now.

asbolondon

March 13th, 2009 9:38am Report this comment

very well said. i am glad that someone has drawn attention to the narrow minded and often parochial attitudes of sports fans to any other sport than their own. whether this is from some misguided sense of loyalty, leading to a feeling of infidelity if one were to support another sport (in much the same way as "true" fans can only be faithful to one team), or from sheer idleness, not making the effort to expand their horizons, it is impossible to say. i myself have benefitted hugely from having at least two very close friends in the US who have taken the time to explain baseball and american football to me. I still don't understand them, but they have opened my eyes to a whole new world (and, as any new experience should) made me view our UK and European sports in a different light.

dearieme

March 13th, 2009 10:16am Report this comment

The point with a couple of the American games isn't that they are childish, it's the point that the children in question are girls.

ndm

March 13th, 2009 3:58pm Report this comment

A significant point to the discredit of American popular sports is the extent to which they are dominated by the desire of the media to have extensive opportunity for advertising DURING the game.

I remember listening to the feverish end of a Celtic match in Spain with the bhoys desperately holding on to the needed result. Later that day I caught the end of a basketball game in which the last 30 seconds of play was interrupted by TWO separate advertising breaks. Now basketball fans can pretend all they like that the opportunity to go and buy a beer (sorry, make a cup of tea) somehow adds to the excitement but they would be wrong.

But nationalism is not really the issue it is the sport itself. I wonder if Alex Massie would share his opinion of 20/20 cricket with us.

Not Even Likely

March 13th, 2009 5:04pm Report this comment

I'm not sure of the purpose of any spectator sport, except to drink beer while watching it, and to have something on which to place bets. Beer helps that process, too. So to sum up, to me, it's all about the beer.

Alf Tupper

March 13th, 2009 5:28pm Report this comment

Mrs Tupper fails to appreciate my sport viewing habit. During the week as I was watching the glory of the annual advance of the Reds, she popped in on one of her obligatory tea runs. Having put down said beverage and attendant Hob Nobs, she attempted to set about some kind of conversation (Yes, actually DURING open play)

I was obviously engrossed in the on screen action and as she should have been well aware, multi-tasking is a foreign country. I accentuated my incommunicado posture, but no. Umbrage was taken and she just came out with the statement that, "You think more of football than you do of me"

The quickest way to close the matter was to tell her that more accurately, I think more of darts than I do of her. Artfully, I had seen to it that the victuals were firmly in my possession prior to my words and her somewhat theatrical exit.

Kittler

March 14th, 2009 4:21pm Report this comment

You peasant Alex. Sport is doing things to animals ~ stalking, shooting, hunting and that sort of stuff. What you are referring to are GAMES.

Brendan

March 14th, 2009 9:02pm Report this comment

I would tend to agree that viewing **some** sports matches in the U.S. is much more about the complete "experience" of the game than the mere observation of the competition itself. Going to Fenway Park and walking down Yawkey Street with its vendors, shops, etc is a glorious event in and of itself -- not to mention talking smack to the outfielders of the opposing team from the bleachers. However, I can appreciate all of this without having to impute some type of comparative evaluation to it all. I will concede that watching Hurling players in Ireland almost break each other's jaws every five minutes with their sticks is quite enjoyable.

Sriram

March 16th, 2009 3:51am Report this comment

baseball for cricket fans will be hard until mlb finds a way to get rid of chucking & the silly walking-on-hits!grow up!even 4th grade kids playing street cricket cant wait to stop chucking & show off their runup & leap!full grown adults chucking is gross..this is not to deny my love of tigers or kenny rogers but baseball is not an adult game