Today's French team is populated with players of Arab and African origin; star forward Franck Ribery is a Muslim convert reborn as Bilal Yusuf Mohammed. The German squad features Turkish starters, the Dutch squad finally has a black striker. Argentine Lionel Messi has lived in Spain for most of his life; Brazil's Kaka and Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo play together—for Spain's Real Madrid. Nine of the U.S. players live and play in Britain—and seven more are first-generation Americans. Italy—perhaps by virtue of its lousy colonial record—is the least diverse of these squads. But even stiff-lipped England has embraced the new norm: An English commercial for football company Umbro features the polyethnic masses in contemporary Britain—an elderly man in dreadlocks, a young South Asian woman—clad in St. George's red, singing, lustily, "God Save the Queen."
Showing posts with label sport. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sport. Show all posts
18 June 2010
World Cup frenzy
It's that time again. Cars drive past our house flying the various banners of the contenders for the coveted World Cup, as they did four years ago. Dayo Olopade reflects on some of the historical ironies in the individual matches and in the ethnic composition of the teams themselves: At the World Cup, the Empire Strikes Back.
25 February 2010
Canada and the US
This has to be the best video ever made on the Canada-US relationship and ought to be widely distributed. It should also be viewed full screen.
25 June 2008
Minor league baseball
As a nonbaseball fan, I have nevertheless attended more games than most people, and these have usually involved the Chicago Cubs or White Sox. Having personally known one player and hosted another at our family home in my youth, I had major league baseball as a part of my life for some years.
I do not recall ever attending a minor league game. Back in 1991 I did attend an exhibition game between a visiting Soviet (yes, Soviet, for a few more months!) team from Tiraspol and a local team from Geneva, Illinois. Around that time I learned that the ball park we were visiting would soon host a minor league team moving from Wisconsin. This became the Kane County Cougars, now a class A affiliate of the Oakland Athletics. At the time I thought the team should be called the Geneva Psalms, but obviously nothing came of that.
As far as I know, there is but one minor league team in Canada, the Vancouver Canadians. Even our own Toronto Blue Jays has farm teams only in the US and the Dominican Republic. The closest such team to us is the Buffalo Bisons, an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, whose name and mascot have been a source of controversy in recent years.
There. Got that out of my system. This is probably my last post on baseball for another few years. Baseball fans should check back here in, say, 2013.
As a nonbaseball fan, I have nevertheless attended more games than most people, and these have usually involved the Chicago Cubs or White Sox. Having personally known one player and hosted another at our family home in my youth, I had major league baseball as a part of my life for some years.
I do not recall ever attending a minor league game. Back in 1991 I did attend an exhibition game between a visiting Soviet (yes, Soviet, for a few more months!) team from Tiraspol and a local team from Geneva, Illinois. Around that time I learned that the ball park we were visiting would soon host a minor league team moving from Wisconsin. This became the Kane County Cougars, now a class A affiliate of the Oakland Athletics. At the time I thought the team should be called the Geneva Psalms, but obviously nothing came of that.
As far as I know, there is but one minor league team in Canada, the Vancouver Canadians. Even our own Toronto Blue Jays has farm teams only in the US and the Dominican Republic. The closest such team to us is the Buffalo Bisons, an affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, whose name and mascot have been a source of controversy in recent years.
There. Got that out of my system. This is probably my last post on baseball for another few years. Baseball fans should check back here in, say, 2013.
01 October 2004
The all-American sport
For someone who is not a baseball fan, I've been to more professional games than I can count. The earliest was in the old Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, sometime in the early 1960s. The most recent was probably close to two decades ago, but in between times I attended scores of games in different cities. Usually this was with family members who were fonder of the game than I. To be sure, I will admit to having enjoyed these times, but I generally paid little attention to what was going on down on the field, content instead either to converse with the people I was with or simply to soak up the quintessential American cultural experience.
All the same, it's difficult not to get caught up in something of the romance of the sport. Back in the middle years of the last century, pro baseball was exclusively a northeastern and middle-western sport. A list of the teams in 1932 illustrates this: in the National League were the Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh Pirates, Brooklyn Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Braves, New York Giants, St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds; in the American League, the New York Yankees, the Philadelphia Athletics, Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns, Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox. Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and St. Louis each had two teams, and New York had three. This was before a series of moves in the 1950s and later sent a number of teams south and west. As a result of this and of the creation of new teams, baseball became even more all-American than it had been before, since it was more widely dispersed across the country. It eventually moved north of the border, with the Blue Jays and Expos. There was even a musical play and subsequent movie, Damn Yankees, about the obsessiveness of a Senators fan who sells his soul to the devil to see his favourite team win the World Series.
When I was around 17 years old our family became friends with a Cubs pitcher and his family who lived down the street from us. For the next year or so our two families spent a fair amount of time at the venerable Wrigley Field, sitting down in the section closest to the game with the other players' families while he was out on the field. We even had Ernie Banks and his ex-wife at our house once. As a result of this some of my younger siblings became ardent baseball fans. As for me, I was by then a little too old for all this to have had too great an impact. I hadn't been a fan up to that point and I wasn't all that interested in becoming one, though I was content to attend the games.
Keiichiro
Wrigley Field, Chicago
I can't say I've thought too long and hard about baseball since those days of my youth. But the news that Canada will now have only one baseball team brought some of this back to mind.
One final thought in this rather stream-of-consciousness reflection on a game on which I am not all that keen. My hometown of Chicago is reputed to have the teams with the worst records in baseball. I have in my drawer a t-shirt which is entirely too small for me now but which I sometimes wear when gardening. On the front is emblazoned the proud words: "CHICAGO WHITE SOX, WORLD CHAMPIONS, 1918." I suppose that says it all.
For someone who is not a baseball fan, I've been to more professional games than I can count. The earliest was in the old Comiskey Park, home of the Chicago White Sox, sometime in the early 1960s. The most recent was probably close to two decades ago, but in between times I attended scores of games in different cities. Usually this was with family members who were fonder of the game than I. To be sure, I will admit to having enjoyed these times, but I generally paid little attention to what was going on down on the field, content instead either to converse with the people I was with or simply to soak up the quintessential American cultural experience.
All the same, it's difficult not to get caught up in something of the romance of the sport. Back in the middle years of the last century, pro baseball was exclusively a northeastern and middle-western sport. A list of the teams in 1932 illustrates this: in the National League were the Chicago Cubs, Pittsburgh Pirates, Brooklyn Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, Boston Braves, New York Giants, St. Louis Cardinals and Cincinnati Reds; in the American League, the New York Yankees, the Philadelphia Athletics, Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, St. Louis Browns, Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox. Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia and St. Louis each had two teams, and New York had three. This was before a series of moves in the 1950s and later sent a number of teams south and west. As a result of this and of the creation of new teams, baseball became even more all-American than it had been before, since it was more widely dispersed across the country. It eventually moved north of the border, with the Blue Jays and Expos. There was even a musical play and subsequent movie, Damn Yankees, about the obsessiveness of a Senators fan who sells his soul to the devil to see his favourite team win the World Series.
When I was around 17 years old our family became friends with a Cubs pitcher and his family who lived down the street from us. For the next year or so our two families spent a fair amount of time at the venerable Wrigley Field, sitting down in the section closest to the game with the other players' families while he was out on the field. We even had Ernie Banks and his ex-wife at our house once. As a result of this some of my younger siblings became ardent baseball fans. As for me, I was by then a little too old for all this to have had too great an impact. I hadn't been a fan up to that point and I wasn't all that interested in becoming one, though I was content to attend the games.
Keiichiro
Wrigley Field, Chicago
I can't say I've thought too long and hard about baseball since those days of my youth. But the news that Canada will now have only one baseball team brought some of this back to mind.
One final thought in this rather stream-of-consciousness reflection on a game on which I am not all that keen. My hometown of Chicago is reputed to have the teams with the worst records in baseball. I have in my drawer a t-shirt which is entirely too small for me now but which I sometimes wear when gardening. On the front is emblazoned the proud words: "CHICAGO WHITE SOX, WORLD CHAMPIONS, 1918." I suppose that says it all.
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