At Least It's Not Baseball

Sports are sports. (Or if you like, Sport is Sport.) Sports enthusiasts have preferences and favorites, of course, but a sport fan is a sport fan. Almost the only game a self-professed sports enthusiast claims to despise is baseball. Take me, for example. I'll watch any game that doesn't bore me to tears, and I'll play any game for which I'm fit enough. (This prerequesite excludes many of them.) My favorites to watch are hockey, basketball, thai boxing and sumo wrestling, and I'm not averse to rolling up my sleeves, drinking eighteen beers and screaming at a soccer game.

Americans love to hate on soccer, claiming that it's a pussy game for pretty boys with long hair and manicured fingernails. Or that it's a communist sport that everyone in the world with an inferior grasp of the capitalist philosophy plays in order to stave off the hunger pains (Cuba, Poland, Argentina, Ethiopia, Turkey, insert poor nation here). But seriously... baseball?

On Eurosport, you can watch anything that includes competing and points. You can watch ski jumping, field sports, sumo, K1, snooker, darts. Watching a fat bald guy swilling beers and swaggering about a darts stage on a sports channel is always one of those "I am so glad to be in Europe" moments. They also do the boring sports like tennis and soccer, which usually take up a couple of weeks while they cover an entire tournament. But so be it. They treat all sports the same.

One sport I have never ever seen on Eurosport is baseball. I've watched some valiant attempts at basketball and hockey (by definition quite unEuropean, both of them), but even people who consider fucking darts a sport have to draw a line somewhere.

So, soccer. It's no basketball or hockey or even rugby, let me tell you. Relatively few Americans have ever sat in a bar, or anywhere for that matter, and watched a soccer game in its entirety. Or even in its fractionality. Or anything. But once you step three milimeters over the American border, you will find yourself in a land where everyone watches soccer on TV. What I mean to say is, at all the customs offices along latitude 49 and the Rio Grande, the Canadian and Mexican officers are in shorts. And "football" scarves. Yes, even Mexican customs officers wear football scarves, even in the desert. What? Were you there? NO you weren't. No you shut up.

OK. I'm lying. But the point is, everyone watches soccer except us, and no one watches baseball except us. Six billion people versus Jed and Jethro. Who's right?

So, me. I'm not a big fan of either sport. But consider this. One time I went to a game--yes, that age-old scapegoat of boring sports (It's so much better when you're actually there, you have to get the stadium experience)--a Mariners game. Now, at the time, the Mariners were doing very well on the national baseball scene and at great taxpayer expense were enjoying a shiny new stadium. My boss got us fantastic seats and bought me as many $7 beers as I could hold. I'm pretty sure I had a hot dog tossed at me, or some peanuts or something else appropriately authentic. And it still blew. I have been to ballets that were more stimulating.

On the other hand, during the epic Turkey vs. Germany match, the one which decided who would go on to play Russia for the European title last year, a couple friends and I went to a bar up the street from my house, sat on benches on the sidewalk, and sipped beers while peering in through a dirty window at a screen that was twenty feet away--and had a blast. Because I live in a Turkish neighborhood, the streets were electrified with the vibe of excited sports fans from both countries. DIY parade floats, i.e. beat-up convertibles with streamers (in red and white for Turkey; red, yellow and black for Germany) and flags all over them, and people sitting atop the seats, cruising through the streets shouting and honking horns and shooting off firework guns; people setting fireworks off in the middle of the streets, dropping them from balconies. It was madness.

Now when was the last time anyone got that excited about a baseball game? After a baseball game all anyone wants to do go get more Bud Light and watch the highlights on FOX news.

Lame.