Around two or three thousand hamburgers were sold in Maadi last weekend at the international schools’ baseball tournament. I can’t seem to track down the exact number, but the one I devoured was all that fast food promises, but rarely delivers.
Apparently I have Melanie Nelson and Nevine Jeff to thank from Maadi’s American College Booster Club. They dressed up the softball grounds in Ramadan bunting and kept hundreds of ball players fed and watered over the three days of competition that ended with the hosts defeating the American College of The Hague 4-3 in the final.
You may never have attended a professional game in the lower 48 (USA without Hawaii and Alaska), but American sports are all about the chilli dog, nachos, big gulps and pre-game tail gate parties.
“It is not the hours you put in, but the effort in the hours, I read on the back of a co-ed’s T-shirt, as I strained from behind the bleachers to get a view of the field of dreams.
It was Little America. Hamburgers, XXXL T-shirts, New York Yankees and dusty ball players from London, Paris and Tel Aviv that would not be out of place in the Little Leagues of Iowa.
Standing behind the dug-out of the St. John’s School, Belgium, I was impressed with the trash talk. “Base hit baby, team mates called to the batter. It is a game that runs on attitude. Ball players get in your face, but when you are at the plate, facing down the pitcher’s mound, your chances of a hit are one in three – if you’re any good, that is.
It is the signature democratic game for Americans. You strike out more times than not, it promises the grand slam home run, but like fast food, it rarely delivers. There are various manifestations of the game and the diamond is inclusive of age, sex and weight. Everyone is welcome to play.
But the more I watched the crowd, the more I was reminded about that line from the film “Apocalypse Now. The air cavalry having parked their choppers for the night are barbecuing on the beach and Martin Sheen’s narration says something along the lines of, “The more they make it like home, the more homesick the boys get.
The Lebanese writer, Amin Maalouf, would argue differently. His recent book, “In the Name of Identity, talks about how people today have more than one identity. Ask a South African, or wonder what happened to the proud citizens of the former Yugoslavia? I would have to agree, single nationalism is on the way out, and various cultural identities are today’s vogue.
It was a very family affair at Victory College, as the clang of the aluminium bat bombed balls to the outfield. I greet someone I know. The home crowd are beside themselves as the tabla drums out the school war-cry and a student mascot dressed as an eagle flaps its wings. The pitcher’s mound adds an extra yard to the speed of the pitch, but it doesn’t seem to matter as the hits and base runners come thick and fast.
Mini-skirted teens and awkward boys patrol the periphery and the moms work overtime on the concession stand. It is salt of the earth stuff. Kids come first and there must be a daughter called Taylor here somewhere tonight?
And if you ever wonder who owns all those SUVs in Cairo, well it seemed they were all parked that weekend in the Victory College parking lot.
The St. John’s dug-out keeps up their trash talk. They are the Jackass generation of the popular TV show and film. Laurel and Hardy pranks with firecrackers, hammers, sharp objects and all the sensitive body parts.
My theory is that this is how the war in Iraq will be remembered. The Jackass war. When war is over, it is the soldiers that eventually define the experience. Be it the poems from the muddy trenches of France, the drug haze protest music of Vietnam and from Baghdad, it will be the Jackass prank. Mark my words: Baghdad is full of cameras that soon enough will tell the soldier’s story along the lines of a Jackass script.
End of commercial, it is now back to the ball game. The victorious Cairo team had three of their players, Will Sims, Jerry Davis and Bryan Lanzet selected in the tournament’s “all star team. The tournament rotates between The Hague, London and Cairo, so I guess the next time it is back at Victory College, the Oval Office will have a new resident, maybe the youthful Obama, thankfully someone I don’t see sitting around watching re-runs of Jackass whilst Rome burns.
