Wednesday 6th May 2009 – Watching the Ballgame

I've found a reason for HD TV: it's possible to watch ice hockey and see (more-or-less) what's going on.  Of course TV does it it's way, and, as usual, gets it wrong.  The box which turns the numbers back into pictures will tend to favour bodies and faces when it can't keep up, fading the skates and sticks and puck into the background.  But it's still a good bit closer to being there.  I've decided that ice hockey is the American equivalent of the beautiful game. 

American games are all faster, sharper, more to the point.  American Football is like rugby, without all the boring bits.  Where the boring bits would be slogging on in rugby, nothing at all happens in American football, so the TV can show adverts, and we can go to the bathroom (I'm back to using the original expression from my childhood), or get more beer. 

Baseball is like cricket, without the endless hours of bowler trying to outsmart batsman.  Baseball is the man-to-man confrontation: the pitcher is allowed four mistakes, and the batter is allowed three: within that, the batter has to get to run, or the pitcher has to get him out.  And ditto for the boring bits: there are plenty of beer and comfort breaks.  Baseball also has statistics.  Every time anything at all happens, the screen is covered in a blizzard of figures.  If you say some team or other is doing well, or badly, someone will respond with a number.  I told the cab driver, who claimed to be a Twins fan, that they didn't seem to be doing too well (They've just been hammered twice).  He responded instantly by saying they were "point five", and the season had over a hundred games to go.

But it seems to me that ice hockey is the one that most closely mirrors soccer (sorry, not a word I normally use, but it's the only way to avoid ambiguity).  These guys really can bend it like Beckham.  And they can dish it out like Roy Keene as well.  And it seems to flow fast and furious, with hardly a break.

 

Well, that's what you get from sitting in a bar of an evening.  Any self-respecting bar has all three going on TV at the same time, with basketball probably being added.  But for me, basketball is where they've put all the boring bits.