Tuesday, April 24, 2007
A Line Drive
Except for MotoGP, the only other sport besides F1 that I watch with any modicum of regularity is Baseball (that of the 'cap' fame). It occurred to me that our two sports are similar in many respects. The amount of money spent on players, teams, and branding is phenomenal. More interesting is the level of secrecy. As in F1, Baseball teams attempt to maintain the secrecy of their performance as long as possible. I was reminded of this by the new Boston Red Sox signing Daisuke Matsuzaka: apparently he throws a 'gyro' ball, but no one has really been able to figure it out yet. Is it a change up? A fast ball? A slider that doesn't slide? Or a nothing ball? The bluff and counter-bluff that went on pre-season about this seemed pretty similar to some of the stuff we hear from F1 teams. Beside this rivalry, however, is also a friendship between all the teams, in the same way you'll see F1 mechanics and team managers mingling indiscriminately. Players will leave their dugout pre-game to go say hello to players on the opposing side, and runners on base will chat and joke with fielders in-between pitches. Of course, you could say that all sports are like this, or all people, but then that wouldn't make a very interesting post. For no other reason than I like the colour green, I support the Oakland Athletics.
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I forgot to mention that they interviewed some baseball players and asked them which sport has a harder time: soccer in the US, or baseball in the UK? Most of them took the opportunity to say what they thought of soccer: they thought it was incredibly slow, like watching paint dry, that they would never be able to watch a whole game because it was far too long. As you can guess, someone said almost this exact same thing to me about baseball on Sunday when I told them I liked it.
On a less cynical note, Premiership clubs (and to a lesser extent the lower divisions) are taking on many of the US sport traits of getting you into the stadium early and tempting you to hang about afterwards, with cheap beer, prize draws and competitions on the pitch, etc. Half time is longer than it used to be to give people a chance to get their tea/pie or spend money in the club shop. Some of the less classy clubs also play music when their team scores á la ice hockey. I really hate that :)
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