In Kenya, like in most other countries around the world, a lot of people tend to think of Americans as rather loud and dim-witted. Most importantly though, Americans have the reputation of being completely ignorant about sports. Growing up in Kenya all my friends and I would laugh at how slow American football was and at the fact that this “sport” really had very little to do with the ball touching your feet. “Baseball” was for girls and we only knew “Ice Hockey,” if I correctly recall, as an explanation as to why Rodney’s cousin from Canada had no teeth.
I can certainly admit that most of us back home knew who Michael Jordan was at least two and a half years before we knew that the hallowed game of basketball involved two teams of seven and that “slam dunk jamming” didn’t occur every four seconds as watching CNN sports highlights might have had us believe.
Until three weeks ago my high school buddy Jamie thought “NASCAR” had something to do with Apollo 13 and even for the slightly more intelligent, such as myself, who had a vague idea about Dale Earnhardt, it was absolutely nothing compared with Formula 1 motor racing. I mean seriously, would you rather watch cars named “Home Depot” and “Kmart” go around a track 300 times for a full day or be awestruck by a Mercedes or BMW taking hairpin bends at breakneck speed for a moderate yet wonderfully satisfying 90 minutes?
Take soccer for example, but just assume for a few seconds we’re not in the United States and we’re calling it by its real and highly sacred name of “football.” You guys decide to take the name of the most popular sport in the world and then apply it to a different game where people wear helmets and weirdly-shaped pads. Who does that? And if that wasn’t enough you then go and change the name of the most popular sport in the world to something as awkward sounding as “soccer.”
And now for the most obscure sport of all. Yes, you guessed it, none other than “lacrosse.” My first year of college I had never heard of the game. Then, one day, I was stumbling around the clusters of Harbin when another foreign kid said, “Yo man, there’s some Lacoste playas across the hall dude. I hear they’re really cool.” Wow, I thought. Some fashion designers from France who know how to mack it with the chicks! Georgetown is so diverse!
I was going to talk about “racquetball” next, but I think this is a good time for me to stop and talk about the real point of this piece before I get carried away. I’m not here to bash American sports at all. In fact, I genuinely find it amazing that such a tremendous industry of sports that is hardly recognized worldwide can exist on such a large scale at both a collegiate and professional level. Indeed, any American can probably turn around and ask, like my roommates often do, “What the hell kind of game is cricket? The ball can go behind you when you bat? A game can take up to five days to finish?” And then they get started on my favorite sport of all: “You play field hockey? Do you wear a skirt? Why can’t you guys just play American sports?” And that is a valid question but one to which I always reply, “Dude, if the British had colonized the United States for as long as they did the rest of the world then I’m pretty sure everyone from Long Island to Long Beach and Seattle to St. Petersburg would be wearing cricket “whites,” holding a field hockey stick or passing a rugby ball. Barry Bonds would be the first to score 400 runs in a single game and Randy Johnson would take all 20 “wickets” in an inning. Eric Lindros would be tearing up the hockey fields of Texas, and I’m pretty certain the Redskins would be as bad at rugby as they are at American football.
But having attended Georgetown and experienced American culture for two years now I’ve started to appreciate the phenomenon of sport so much more. Sport isn’t about “British” and “American” and it’s not even really about understanding a game down to the last rule. It was impossible not to get hooked on basketball as Georgetown made its fantastic run to the Sweet 16 last spring, even if I didn’t know what an offensive foul was. In the same way, it’s hard not to smile and watch the screen for a few minutes more when my roommate Nick sticks another dip in his mouth and yells out, “Get on her Dale!” in a redneck accent as he watches NASCAR on a Saturday afternoon. Watching the baseball playoffs last week surrounded by die-hard Yankees fans was nothing short of intense. Sure, Alex made fun of me for thinking Mark McGwire was black and a “thrower” playing for Oakland and Jo almost kicked me out of the apartment when I couldn’t name a single starter on the Yankees. But it wasn’t so different from watching a cricket or rugby world cup qualifier in a room packed with friends who love the game. It was as typically American as I could think of in the best ways possible: crappy beer in a keg, kids from New York in a college dorm room, baseball on TV and Matt cussing every three seconds. It was all happening. And after the game when Rich’s apartment instantly decided to drive all the way to Maryland, bought tickets and then planned to take the train to New York for game five the very next day, American sports made sense.
It’s all about the euphoria and the passion, so don’t be bitter next time you go to Yates for a spot of squash and find out that the American version courts are the wrong shape, the wrong size and painted with the lines in the wrong places. From Kenya to Kansas the world is a place of sporting unity. Sack up and have a game man!
