All Gone to Look for America by Peter Millar Read Free Book Online Page B

55,000 and has rarely been as full as it was when the Beatles played. The cheapest seats, right up high, cost little over five dollars, but I splash out on one lower down, closer to the action at $21 which these days works out at half what I pay to watch even a game in the second tier of English football, let alone the extravagant cost of watching Chelsea or Arsenal. The ticket salesman tries to coax me into a $35 seat, lower down and in a ‘better position’. But as I haven’t much idea of what goes on and can’t quite see myself sticking it out for the full three and a half hours or more, he’s on a no-win.
    The arena itself is impressive – as big sports stadia are – but seems curiously incomplete with the seating on just two sides behind the batsman (called ‘the batter’), so that when he hits a six – or whatever they call it – he is unlikely to kill anyone (inside the stadium at least). This has at least one clear advantage over cricket, where to avoid risk of injury a live audience has to be so far back asto need binoculars to see much of the action. With the words of Laurence from the night before in my head I am very much aware that all this speaks to the American soul like a cricket pitch or a football ground does to most Englishmen. Indeed, Roger Kahn, the dean of American sports writers, goes further: ‘The ball field itself is a mystic creation, the Stonehenge of America.’ Heavy.
    Then everybody stands up, and they play the national anthem. I wasn’t expecting that, and it’s not the last time American patriotic displays will take me by surprise. We only play the national anthem at international games. Here they play it before every game, the way they fly the Stars and Stripes all year round. They did it before 9/11, but they do it even more now. Most of the crowd sing along, some with their hands on their chests. I stand and smile and remind myself that over here we Brits can rely on a residual goodwill towards us as a ‘loyal ally’, even those of us who thought all along Bush’s war in Iraq was cynical, stupid and probably illegal, and Tony Blair weak and foolish to go along with it. I remind myself I’m just here to watch the baseball.
    As the two teams are introduced individually on huge billboard-sized screens opposite, they don’t just tells us their names, they give us little behavioural tips too, like: ‘If you throw things onto the pitch, you will be arrested’ (fair enough, should be made more clear at football games too) but I can’t see ‘Don’t use bad language!’ getting anything but a ‘Bronx cheer’ from a footie crowd in Britain, the origin of that little expression (the noise of disapproval made by New York Yankees fans) showing that baseball fans at least once upon a time had attitude too. The English-speaking players’ words are subtitled in Spanish, and one or two of them even add a gracias after their ‘thank you’. Spanish -speaking players speak Spanish, with subtitles in English! And even the coach finishes off with a spoken, ‘Thanks, gracias .’ De nada, de nada . America is slowly imperceptibly mutating from within.
    One element of its soul, however, remains unchanged: an unrestrained commitment to commercialism. The loudspeakers have not long finished introducing the teams and the first innings is just getting underway when they burst into life again: ‘Congratulations to the hungry fans in row 115 who’ve all won vouchers for Bubba Burger. Just take your tickets to the franchise to claim!’ Note, now, this is during actual play. Do that in a cricket game in England and people would tut-tut alarmingly at the bad manners, do it in the middle of a football match and, far from queuing up for ‘Bubba Burgers’ the crowd would probably hurl food at the screen. That is if they noticed at all. Because that’s another thing: at a soccer game – there, okay, I said the funny ‘s’ word – fans are committed; apart from the few wallies up in the