I have mentioned here before that beyond the obvious family and friends, whom I miss dearly, the aspect of life that I have longed for the most here has been sports. Back home, sports was a constant presence in my life, almost to the point where it went unnoticed. Access to sports games, news, and analysis was ubiquitous, and while I don't think I ever took it for granted (I've always been very conscious of how much I love sports), days and weeks would pass without me thinking about Sports-with-a-capital-S. Instead, I'd be watching the Ryder Cup and marveling at the spectacular United States collapse on Sunday, or desparately hoping my fantasy football running back didn't get his touchdown poached by his bruising oaf of a backup, or watching Dick Vitale get larangytis shrieking about college basketball even though the season is still months away, or standing in front of the television scoffing at the notion that baseball is a boring sport as two consecutive playoff games featured 8 total runs in 25 innings. Sports as an idea has always been the sum of its parts -- the teams I root for, the physics-defying displays of athleticism, the camaraderie of watching a good game with good friends.
Most of that is unattainable for me in Shanghai. Sure, there are expat sports bars that will air some of the biggest games in the major leagues. But NFL football games start at 1AM Monday morning here. Baseball playoff games begin as I make my morning commute to work. These aren't exactly ideal times to be sitting back and watching a game. So my sports fandom, inherently a shared experience in the US not only with my equally-obsessed friends but with the population as a whole, has become an individual experience. As that has occurred, as my consciousness of how far removed I am from the centers of my sports universe, my fascination with it -- with my teams, the games, the stories, the leagues, Sports in general -- has grown exponentially. The same way the political diaspora has been shown to create more passionate (and often extreme) views on a situation (the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a good example of this), so too does the sports diaspora create a more avid fan.
In the recent weeks, I have desparately followed my Yankees as they held off the Baltimore Orioles in a gripping September race for the American League East Division title. The importance of winning one's division was increased this year by baseball's new playoff format, and so it felt as if they playoffs started a month early. (Point of clarification -- this should not be read as an implicit endorsement of the new system. The jury's still out on that, I think. At the very least, the jury feels really bad for the Rangers and Braves, and their fans, and the jury isn't sure boiling down 162 games into 1 do-or-die game is the best way to decide the playoff fate of four teams. Anyway, I digress).
As the real playoffs began this week, and the Yankees started their first-round series with (who else?) the Orioles, I made my single greatest discovery since coming to Shanghai. I found a viable, if not finicky, streaming host of the playoff games on the Internet. With the exception of some of the early innings, when I'm en route to work, I've been able to watch each of the games in the series. Needless to say, this has not done wonders for my productivity at the office. But given the fact that I'm not really being asked to be that productive (or, really, to do anything at all), I don't feel too bad.
While it might not be as fun as watching a game in a bar, or at home over some beers with a bunch of friends, being able to watch the games this week has been one of the more intense and memorable sports experience of my life. Nonsense, you say -- how could watching a frequently-delayed and occasionally-Spanish Internet feed of a playoff baseball game in a little cubicle at J.D. Power and Associates compare to, say, being at a playoff baseball game, or, say, watching the Giants win their first Super Bowl in a room packed with fraternity brothers all of whom were rooting either for the Giants or against the then-undefeated Patriots. And by certain measures, you'd be right. But precisely because I'm not there, because I'm so far away and have nobody here through whom I can channel my fandom, I'm left to soak all of it in on my own. I can assure you that my heart was pumping just as loudly as, if not louder than, any of yours were when Raul Ibanez hit his first -- and then his second -- home run last night.
It has been an incredibly frustrating series for a Yankees fan. Cry me a river, I hear all of the non-Yankee fans yell. And they're right. That's part of what makes it so frustrating. The Yankees hitters are choking, seemingly under the weight of their gaudy career statistics and accolades which ought to make it a foregone conclusion that they'd beat up on an Orioles starting staff led by only the second most successful major-league pitcher named Chen (whouda thunk that Bruce Chen would get a shout-out on this blog?!). There have been times during this series when I secretly wished I hated the Yankees. It'd be so much fun after a game like tonight's. There have also been times when I wished I loved the Orioles. They're a young team, that has no business being in the playoffs and yet expects to win anyway, with a manager (Buck Showalter -- former Yankee manager) that has turned the laughing stock of the American League into the second coming of the Tampa Bay Rays, in only a little over a year. But I love the Yankees. And I hate the Orioles (at least for now...that might change in about 24 hours). This is Sports, at its best, from halfway around the world.
The two teams are tied, 2-2, heading into a pivotal game 5 tomorrow. CC Sabathia will be pitching for the Yankees against Jason Hammel for the Orioles. Everyone will say that, on paper, the Yankees, at home with their ace on the mound, are the clear favorites to win. If you think that makes me feel any more confident about the game, you're crazy. The sports world will be chattering about how Curtis Granderson has looked like a deer in the headlights, how pinch-hitting for Alex Rodriguez in Game 4 didn't work out quite so well as it did in Game 3, how the Yankees can't expect their starters to keep pitching such great games and will need to actually start hitting if they want to beat the Orioles. The sports blogosphere will be brimming tonight with dissections and analysis of a series that has been as exciting and nerve-wracking as any series featuring only 27 runs scored in 43 innings can be. The writer of this blog, for one, is happy to be able to be along for the ride, pulling for his Yankees, and captivated by the power of sports that, like the heart, grows stronger with distance.
See you all at 5:07 AM China time tomorrow.
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