Health & Fitness
9,000 Miles Away From Opening Day
Lamenting yet another baseball opening day spent abroad, I feel the need to vent about the sports situation in Ethiopia, and reminisce about the good ol' Orange & Black.
With just 2 weeks until the first pitch, the 2012 baseball season is set to open, and once again I seem to have put continents and oceans between myself and the crack of the bat.
I think it goes without saying that the last ten years of Giants fandom has been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, but regardless of the October prospects, one thing is for sure: when the summer sun starts to stretch shadows across the remains of the day, when the air is steeped in the smell of fresh cut grass and barbeque smoke, there’s no better place to be than the ballpark.
Yesterday afternoon I got off a bus that took me back to my home in Masha, Ethiopia, and a day and a half away from the nearest place where I can watch satellite TV late enough into the night to catch some American sports, and if it ain’t the Super Bowl, it ain’t on, anyway.
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Two days ago, my fellow Peace Corps volunteers and I sat on the patio at the Beer Garden in Addis Ababa, and attempted to recreate a St. Patty’s classic, green beer, by enjoying a local classic, neon green Supermint alcohol (what kind of alcohol, none of us could be sure) and St. George’s beer, while one volunteer regaled the table with her glorious tale of discovering a Sudanese restaurant chain down the road that serves “good enough” hot dogs.
Three days ago I was drawing a diagram of a cricket field, and explaining how a game (or “test”) could last three days, easily score into triple digits, and still end in a tie, not because I have a passion for cricket, but because I knew that this might be the closest we get to a ballgame this season.
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Then I related a story I often turn to when I have to validate my low opinion on the “sport”: I once saw an outfielder, clad in fleece vest, and tennis shoes, launch a ball into the unsuspecting head of his would be cut-off man, allowing the runner to score, and effectively knocking his team out of the international semifinals. Yes folks, this was one of the top teams in the world. If cricket is a sport, then it is a sport of buffoons, rather than kings.
Unfortunately, this season I will be relegated to 4 AM start times, Ethiopian beer, Sudanese hot dogs, and… cricket.
But this is my burden to bear.
Since I began my life as a globe trekking do gooder I have spent as many Canada Days in Canada as Fourth of Julys in the States and too many summers steeling my resolve that while rugby is far more fun than football, cricket and baseball aren’t even in the same ballpark.
A ballgame requires a morning stop at the deli for road (or rail) sandwiches, a bike ride to Sequoia Station to catch a train to the park, and occasionally some sort of watercraft for floating in the Cove.
The “Sandwich Concept Zone” in Ethiopia ends just outside of the capital, and frankly, even within that demarcation zone, the concept of the sandwich is still a bit shaky. Even if they had the ingredients to make a “Sicilian”, I don’t know that I’m brave enough to sink my teeth into one that was made in Ethiopia, and I’m brave enough to publicly criticize Meles Zenawi (a man who sentences dissenters to life in prison without appeal), in his own country.
There is but one train in Ethiopia, it runs from Dire Dawa (by bike, Dire Dawa is days from Addis) to Djibouti (it’s the capital of Djibouti, of course), rumor has it that one in four scheduled trains derails, and the ones that stay on track are routinely stopped and raided by bandits. I like those odds, and there isn’t much I wouldn’t do to get to a ballgame, but I don’t think they’re playing baseball in Djibouti, either.
Like most pastimes in Ethiopia, cricket is enjoyed on television, only, but if there were a cricket field out here, and that field had a cove, our medical officer would shudder at the thought of us swimming in it, let alone chilling our beers in it, for fear of chiggers, a parasitic snail larvae that burrows under your skin, causing rash and various other adverse affects, and is present in almost every body of water in this country.
So I must beg those of you back home, enjoy our Giants. Please.
Paint your faces, pack a floatable cooler with cheap beer, get yourself a mile-high from the deli, a roundtrip ticket to the end of the line, and a seat in the left field bleachers. Eat a hotdog with everything on it. Eat two. Eat garlic fries. Eat more garlic fries. For the next six months, wear enough orange to piss off the entire greater LA area. Cool yourself in the mist of the right field water cannons. Walk through China Basin while Journey serenades the Bay over the loudspeakers. And while there are probably a few A’s fans out there who will declare the yellow afternoon sun pouring over the green outfield grass a sign from the baseball gods, I dare you…
Enjoy the orange evening sun spilling black shadows across the City’s streets, and tell me the gods aren’t Giants fans.