The Power and the Money

De base en beis

  Apologies for the lack of posting. I’ve been hit hard by something that isn’t quite the flu, and certainly isn’t H1N1, but is one of the worst colds that I’ve had in a very long time.  Not as bad as that thing that hit me in Columbus, Georgia, back in 2002, but bad. 

Anyway, before I get down to business, let me talk about recreation. You can’t visit Caracas and not go to baseball game, especially if the Magallanes are in town.  Leones’ fans hate the Magallanes, which means that there was no way that I was gonna say no when Francisco Sanánez, the head of Venezuela’s IESA business school, invited me to the game.

It’s a surprisingly small stadium, maybe 16,000 seats.  In fact, it’s a university ballpark, rather than a true professional stadium.   Nothing like the Foro Sol in Mexico, not even as big as the old Seguro Social.  That said, the streets around the park manage to be so badly designed that resulting traffic jams make you feel like you’re headed to a much larger forum. The wandering mobs wearing Leones and Magallanes colors add to that feeling.

I couldn’t bring myself to tell my hosts that the raucous atmosphere inside the ballpark really wasn’t all that out-of-line with what you’d find in Yankee Stadium.  The cops ejected somebody from the bleachers, but that happens in the Bronx with some regularity.  The outside was lined with more and less-formal food and clothing stands than you’d find in the States (or even, as may surprise you, Mexico City) but still, nothing to write home about. 

This is not to say that the atmosphere is the same as at home.  Oh no.  This is Venezuela, my friends.  First sign of that happens before the game, where these pneumatic women in very tight jeans stand around flanking home plate.  They’re the Magallanes cheerleaders, who won’t cheer; their job is simply to intimidate the opposition fans.  And they do that quite well.

Of course, the home team also has its cheerleaders, who come out about three times over the course of the game.  Does anyone remember the XFL?  They’re like that.  Mexican professional ball games also feature cheerleaders, but they’re wholesome in comparison.  These, well, could probably get you arrested in some states, although I’m told from that the scenes in those cheerleading movies that I will never ever admit to having seen are about as risqué. 

27 and a good cigar

  It wasn’t against the Dodgers, so I didn’t spend the bank to get to the Bronx.  Instead, I watched the games at the Thirsty Scholar in Somerville, which appears to have (as I’ve mentioned before) become an unofficial Yankees bar.  I showed up with my high school buddy Carlo Cerruti; other friends drifted in as the night progressed.  Ultimately, there were six of us; but we were there with around fifteen other fans who’d independently discovered that you were unlikely to be assaulted in Yankees regalia at this place.  I speak as someone who has been told by one Boston bartender that his cheering was “inappropriate” and by another “I’m going to have to ask you to tone it down, if you’re going to root for them.”  And those were in yuppie upscale places that I’d scouted in the Harvard Square area because I thought they’d be more Yankees-friendly. Polite yes, friendly no.

The other good thing about the Scholar is that you can smoke outside in full view of several large vidscreens.

No blow-by-blow of the game.  I mean, it was a bar!  Nothing interesting, the way there woulda been at an actual game, that you can’t get from the sports pages.  There were three Phillies fans in the place, all dressed up with Victorino jerseys and all, but they left in the seventh.  What??  The game was by no means over at that point.  If they hadn’t dressed for the occasion, okay, but they had.  Why put in all that prep work and go to a Yankees-friendly place just to give up and leave before the fat lady has sung? 

There was also a bartender from Terry Francona’s favorite bar.  He bites his tongue about his true allegiance when on the job.  You also had the brother-and-sister team from the Big Apple.  I know, the great thing about New York is that nobody looks like they’re from New York.  But to this native New Yorker, this pair just looked like they should be from New York.   (They were.  The Bronx, in fact.) 

Bartender gave us victory shots.  On top of at least four pints of brown ale and three cigars that proved to be a serious mistake. 

 
Anyway, the Series took my mind off the frightening amount of work I have to do and the depressing sight of the U.S. Senate doing whatever it is that the Senate does.  And it brought a ring back to where it belongs.  Now all we need to do is repeat the feat in 2010.

Halloween is ...

 ... a great time to be a Yankees fan in Roslindale, Massachusetts.  You can tell people that you're only dressed like a Yankees fan when they take issue with your shirt.

It didn't work.  Having the other much better-looking Yankees fan with me did.

Looking forward to tonight.  Off to get some beer, gonna watch this one at home.  But for those of you who live in Boston and are looking for right-minded folk to see the next game(s) with, the Thirsty Scholar in Somerville is becoming an unofficial Yankees bar.  Don't tell the propietors.

Chillin’ like it was 1999

  More like 1989, actually.  Or even 1984.  I’m putting the final touches on two cases (one on Pemex, one on the Iraqi oil industry) with a little blue pen on paper printouts, drinking Busch Light from a can, and switching between MTV Hits (you know, which still plays videos) and the Pittsburgh-Chicago game.  Break was eating my wife’s wonderful noodles.  After a week where sleep really has been optional, this is the way to work. 

One way in which digital technology is inferior to the old is in channel switching.  Analog cable televisions would go bam! instantaneously from one channel to another, especially if you had one of those multiswitch remotes that plugged into the set.  These new ones take a few annoying seconds to make the change.  Strangely, I find myself disappointed to know that said new inconvenience will not be a permanent part of the future’s video experience. 

Anyway, I had to turn on the internet and ruin it all.  Thus, this post.  More on the Canadian oil industry forthwith, but I need to finish these two cases.  Sometimes deadlines are hard, even in academia. 

Whatcha y’all doin’ on this not-so-lazy Sunday, gentle readers?

El ambiente Azteco

  Gancho asks about the ambience at the U.S.-Mexico qualifier.  Why was I at the U.S.-Mexico qualifer?  Wasn’t I just in the Philippines? 

Well, yes.  But I’ve been a bit busy, and when I haven’t been busy I’ve been jet-lagged, so I haven’t written much.  The proximate reason why I needed to go to Mexico was to research a case on Pemex that I’ll be teaching for the first time on September 15th.  (Agh!  Right before Independence Day, no less.) 

That said, the reason that I picked this week instead of some other week is that this was the week of the big game.  I went to the stadium with mis amigos Gabo y Carlos y prima Silvia. For those of you who’ve never been, Estadio Azteca is impressive.  It feels much larger than similarly-sized stadiums in the United States. We got there on public transit, from which you walk down these concrete elevated walkways filled with hawkers selling Tri-related merchandise, including green-white-and-red Pancho Villa mustaches. 

Everyone wore some version of green-and-white; I’m not sure that I’ve ever been to a game anywhere where so many spectators seemed ready to run onto to the field and substitute just in case Javier Aguirre needed them.  

Of course, I was a ringer, a U.S.-fan wearing El Águila under the leather jacket.  What, you think I was going to drape myself in Old Glory?  Not at this game, sir.  I would have been the only person in America’s colors.  In fact, we couldn’t find the opposition stand.  Carlos was certain there was one, but nothing we could see.

The TV-news later showed scenes of people waving Old Glory in what looked to be a stadium of some sort, but we saw nothing.  I later discovered that there was in fact a U.S. section, but if you go below the fold you’ll be able to see why I don’t have any sympathy for them.

The atmosphere was … raucous.  Not unlike a regular-season professional game in Mexico.  Every time Tim Howard tossed or kicked the ball back towards the Mexican side the stands would come alive in a long shout of “puto!”  It felt like a Molotov concert.  The singing of the traditional “En donde estan en donde estan los pinche gringos que nos iban a ganar” only added to the concert-like atmosphere.  As did the fact that Mexican fans threw paper cups at Davies right after he scored the only U.S. goal. 

In fact, hurtling beer cups was a motif of the game.  Whenever the U.S. tried to set up a corner shot, the fans would pelt the player with cups and bottles.  I have been to many sporting events in the U.S. and Canada and Europe, and I’m not sure I’ve ever fans throw stuff at the players outside of Yankee Stadium, and then only in from the bleachers at the far outfield.   

Now, I have to say, hurtling beer cups is a motif of Mexican soccer matches in general.  But I hadn’t been to one in a while, and so the flying cardboard came as a bit of surprise, as did the fact that most of said flying cardboard still seemed to contain beer.  Every time Mexico scored, we got pelted.  It made for an interesting time in the lower stands.  Below the fold you can see one teenager trying to protect his mother with what appears to be an empty box of Glenfiddich. 

Sotomayor, soccer, and all that

  I’m all for ethnic solidarity and all that, but Senator Jeff Sessions is taking it to a whole ‘nother level at the Sotomayor hearings.

Anyway, interesting as the linked story is, I just wanted to post a picture of me in this shirt, which I wore to the World Baseball Classic games in Mexico City.  (The picture above is at my favorite bistro in the D.F.)  I will not be wearing it to the U.S.-Mexico World Cup qualifier in Azteca Stadium on August 12th.  In fact, while I will be rooting for the U.S. team, I also want to live, and so will dress in green and red. 

Patrick, Mike, Carlos, what think you?  Am I wimping out?

El Clásico del Beis

  I'm in Mexico, for work, but one of the nice things about my line of business is that I have some flexibility to choose when I travel.  So I chose this trip to coincide with the first round of the World Baseball Classic, being held at the Foro Sol in Mexico City.  You can kind of see the Foro off to the left of the spiky dome thing in the picture below. 

The spiky dome is the Palacio de los Deportes.  In a sign of the amazing rapidity of Mexico's cultural revolution, it just finished hosting the Expo Sexo 2009, which is exactly what you think it is. 

Anyway, we were in the area for el beis.  For the Cuba-Mexico final game, I was with three fellow fans:  an American, a Venezuelan, and a Canadian.  We took Line 9 of the metro, which was much more crowded than I remember it being.  On the way, we met an older fellow in a baseball jacket.  He was a very talkative guy, who knew a lot about the game.  He also happened to be the most foul-mouthed man I've met in a long time, and that's saying a lot.  Every other word was a curse.  I wish I'd had a tape-recorder; the man was artistic in his use of profanity.

So were the fans.  They shouted pretty foul things at the Cuban team.  Nothing that you wouldn't hear among the Bleacher Creatures of the Bronx, of course, but good to hear.  My favorite was “culero” chanted at anyone who seemed to be, well, a culero.  It was raining — hard — and only the hard core were left by the sixth inning.  (It wasn't, I have to say, a very good game, as a game, and neither was the previous day's match against Australia.)

At one point a dude dressed as a stuffed Barney came out and started a dance with some other stuffed animal, to loud boos.  Until Barney ripped off his head to reveal a wrestling mask, and started tossing the other animal around the sidelines.  That was fun. 

The Cuban fans were also a lot of fun.  They sat in their own blue-white-and-red draped sections, with giant flags and ridiculous wigs, and played music.  We didn't a get a chance to talk to any of them, but I have a strong suspiscion that they're mostly Cuban expats, and not people whom the government flew out for the games.  They didn't seem organized enough.

Anyway, despite getting soaked to the bone, and having beer poured on me, and having people confuse my Puerto Rico flag shirt with a Cuban banner, it was a great night.  ¡Viva el beis!

I got a New York City game

  P.S. 127, yo.  And he went to my high school.

“Champagne on Ice”

 This comes from the archives.  It was posted on another blog on January 21, 2008.  Considering that the football postseason is now entering full swing (and that only Philadelphia survives as a team that can grab my interest) I thought it apropro to repost it now.

It was cold yesterday.  It was cold in Massachusetts.  It was even colder in Green Bay, like negative 17 degrees ... negative 31 with the wind.  Third-coldest postseason game in NFL history. 

The New England game ended the way I like.  The Green Bay game did not.  Overtime, Green Bay wins the toss, an interception, and then Lawrence Tynes gets the third field goal attempt after botching the first two.  Did anyone catch Giants coach Tom Coughlin's temper tantrum after Tynes messed up the first?  I hadn't seen anything like it since basic training.  Sadly, though, it seems to have worked as a motivational device.

Anyway, I know Giants fans, and they simply don't deserve the victory.  Everyone disenchanted with money-drenched professional sports has to love the plucky little municipally-owned team.  And anyone annoyed by fair-weather fans (as a former Bleacher Creature, this often afflicts me at baseball stadiums not located in Boston or the Bronx) has got to love the dedication of those who love the Packers.

“It makes me feel like a sissy,” said Troy Aikman on national television when Fox cut to that shot.  I have to agree.  Over to you, Carlos.

Knuckleballer throws a curve

 It seems that a second professional baseball league has opened in Japan.  I am not clear on the business reasons for the new league (which seems to be more of a minor-league operation than new competition for the Japanese majors) but one of the teams appears to have identified a major-league-quality knuckleballer.  The knuckleball, for those of you who don't know, is one of the trickiest pitches in baseball.  Essentially, the pitcher throws a knuckleball with no spin.  Since a baseball isn't a smooth sphere, in theory the lack of spin makes the ball's trajectory unpredictable and almost impossible to hit.  In practice, the pitcher needs to be very very good to avoid (1) handing the batter an easy hit; (2) throwing a lot of balls; or (3) making life impossible for the catcher and thereby allowing any runners an opportunity to advance.   

The curve?  The knuckleballer so-identifed appears to be a five-foot-tall 16-year-old girl. 

I hope this story pans out.  Truly good knuckleballers are rare.  So the odds are that Eri Yoshida won't make it to the incumbent major leagues in Japan, let alone the United States.  But I hope she does.

Oh boy

This was not good.  Not good at all.

A lawsuit-in-waiting

I’ve been travelling.  More on that later.  Before I left, however, I managed to catch the Yankees in a 2-1 victory over Oakland.  Great game.  Low-scoring fast-moving pitchers’ duel.  Oakland’s second-baseman tried to fake a throw to first and wound up looking like a minor-leaguer to the uninformed. 

Didn't hurt that I was, for the first time in my life, watching from a luxury box with an Army colonel and a professional opera singer, among others.  As the opera singer’s brother said:  “It's like having the world’s greatest hi-def television.”  Plus Italian sausage and all the beer you could drink.

After all that luxury, we hadda go get some pizza (and more beer) over on 157th Street.  And what did we see?

The sign below the green Presidente neon logo reads, literally, “Proper-looking young women needed to work.”

The usual figurative reading of “proper-looking,” however, isn’t “proper-looking.”  It’s “white.”  Or at the very least, “white enough for the person doing the hiring.” 

I must be missing a joke.  Right?  This is the 21st century. 

At least there’s a “For Sale” sign on the door. 

Great game 2

Dude. Holy shit. Zac Pelleriti and I are watching the game, and we both seriously thought it was over when Croatia scored.  I mean, minute 118, what could happen?  And then Turkey ties it with, what, thirty seconds left?  Awesome.

By the time penalty kicks started, half the department is my office watching Croatia blow it. 

And it's on to watch Ay-Yıldızlılar play the Nationalelf! Man, I'd like to go back to Berlin to see that.  I'd say it'd be like watching Mexico play the U.S. in Los Angeles, except that almost no native-born Americans (of Mexican descent or otherwise) could give a f**k.

I'm a happy man.  Tomorrow I'll be rooting for the Netherlands, and believe you me, on Sunday I'll be back supporting the madre patria against the sleaze, or whatever they call themselves.  Here's to maximizing my cheering confusion:  Türkiye v. España for the 2008 European Cup.  (My ignorance over the actual chances of that happening is indeed bliss.)

¡Viva Turquía!  ¡Viva España!

Great game

No, not the sixth game of the NBA final.  That was awful.  (I wasn't rooting for the Lakers, but I'm not much of a Celtics fan either.  So something other than a blowout would have been nice.)  Rather, das wunder von Genf, the match between Turkey and the Czech Republic.  Down two-to-nothing, one goal with 25 minutes to go ... then two more in the last four minutes.  Dude.

I have to admit that we wouldn't have bothered to watch it at all if we hadn't been walking past a Turkish bakery-slash-café-slash-bar in Kreuzberg next to what certainly appeared to be a housing project.  I couldn't stop myself from looking in through the window at the giant flat screen.  Any kind of team sporting event involving a ball will do that do me. 

The people inside spotted us and vigorously motioned us in.  In fact, one of the owners came out and insisted (through sign language) that he could find us a seat and we were more than welcome.  How could we say no?  After all, the game had only just begun.  And so, we had the full build-up of frustration that only soccer can produce by the time Ay-Yıldızlılar first scored. 

Apparently shouts of gooooooooooooolllll, go-lo-lo-lo-looooooooooooooool!" aren't a common German or Turkish way of expressing appreciation.  I judge this from the fact that when Turkey scored its first goal, my reaction attracted looks from some of the women in the place that I can only describe as bemused. 

I'll add here that neither high-fives nor fist-bumps appear to be used much either.  But the little kids in the place, and there were a lot of them, certainly seemed to appreciate both gestures, especially after Turkey's second goal.

The woman in the above picture who isn't my wife asked me if I was Muslim right after the game.  Before I could answer, the fellow on the right barged up and shouted, "In football, there is no religion!" 

By the amount of beer-drinking going on, I'd have to say that he was right. 

The owners gave us free pastries.  (We paid for the beer.)  They were great pastries.  Very recommended, the next time you're in Berlin.

Anyone know a good place in Boston to watch the Turkey-Croatia match?  Y'all know who I'll be rooting for.  ¡Viva Turquía! 

Grump, grump, grump, grump, grump

There will be no explanation, no pictures, nothin'.  Y'all know what I'm complaining about. 

There's always a bright side, though.  First, I'm in the Golden State, rather than the Bay one.  That makes it easier.  Second, there was a worry that the victory parade might depress turnout for my favored candidate in Tuesday's primary.  Guess that's not a worry anymore.  Third, Amma's family in Queens are very very happy.  (My family in Miami is not.) 

Carlos, I thought that football was supposed to be more predictable.  This was like watching three starters give up 21 runs in four innings.  WTF?  It certainly gave meaning to the phrase, "The best defense is a good offense," but still. 

Please don't forget to thank Doug for the Friday links.  We're all overwhelmed a bit by work-related program activities at the moment.  Feel free to discuss the game.  Or any other game.  I will endeavor (but don't promise) not to delete any "go jints!" or "woooo" comments.

Nostalgia, Part 4: Canadian Content

Bostonians don't realize it, but New York also has a serious baseball rivalry with Toronto.  (I'm not sure that Torontonians realize it either, to be honest.)  The below picture is at a game against the Blue Jays. 

I've been to couple of Yankees games at whatever they're calling the Skydome these days, and they're always very well attended by whole families of New Yorkers up for the weekend. 

Of course, if the loonie stays around par, that kind of thing might become less attractive. Will the Torontonians care?  I have to say, I've always found the kind of Yankee fan who goes to Toronto games to be remarkably well behaved.  For Yankees' fans.  New Yorkers in general, as we all know, are very polite folks.

(The worst stereotypical big-city rudeness I've ever encountered in my life?  Calgary.  No foolin'.  I think it's because Canadian content laws there have translated into Shania Twain every hour, on the hour.)

Anyway, I think the long slow decline of baseball in Quebec is tragic.  Much as I like the Washington Nationals — much as Washingtonians love having their Nationals — something seems to have gone out of the world with the Expos' departure.   

Nostalgia, or lack thereof, Part 3

So I'm here reading the Congressional debates about the annexation of the Philippines.  Man, Senator Hoar really ripped Senator Beveridge a new one.  "Have you read the Declaration of Independence, sir?  Allow me to remind you."  And Carlos will be proud that his people's representative, Senator John Spooner, proceeded to call Beveridge's economic justifications of American rule "base and sordid." 

But that's not why I'm here.  I'm here to ask a question that I've asked before, but who's answer I've forgotten:

WTF happened to baseball in the Philippines?  It's gone, disappeared, nada, se fué, totally driven out by ... basketball.  How and why did that happen???

Nostalgia, Part 2

By pure coincidence, I just discovered that Dan Drezner had something to say on the subject of baseball nostalgia.

First, it seems as though my comportment, trained in the bleachers of Yankee Stadium, has very long roots in baseball.  I never realized that I was such a traditionalist. 

Second, Conan.

Nostalgia

As a fan of the New England Patriots and the Green Bay Packers, I have to say that this is shaping up to be a most exciting football season.  I've been a New England fan ever since I wrote the job talk that got me my current employment while watching them win the Superbowl.  And I've been a Green Bay fan since becoming friends with Carlos. 

But my football loyalties are shallow.  I'm a baseball man, a fan of the once and future dreaded (but always hated) New York Yankees.

I follow them around.  That's me at Fenway.  I had doffed my hat at the moment that photo was taken, but look at the two guys standing below my right arm.  Yankees hats.  And look at the fellow seated in front of them.  A Derek Jeter jersey.  We are there, in the bleachers of Fenway.  The opposite would not occur in Yankee Stadium, not unless the Red Sox fan in question wanted humiliation.  Or possibly violence.

The Bleacher Creatures of the Bronx are the fellows who learned to chant obscene comments about the sexuality of Dice-K's mother in Japanese.  Two senior professors once took me to a Red Sox game against Toronto.  They weren't surprised, exactly, at my comportment. 

In some ways, Boston and New York are inverses.  In NYC, nobody could care less if you wear Red Sox paraphenalia.  In fact, Manny Ramírez managed to blow a shot at turning most of Washington Heights and a big chunk of the Bronx into part of Red Sox Nation.  (Guess how he blew it.  Right.)  In Boston, though, people feel free to yell at me in the street for wearing a Yankees hat. (And so I mostly don't, except around Harvard Square.)  On the other hand, Yankees fans do fine inside Fenway, even in the bleachers ... and the reverse ain't true in the Bronx.  (I wouldn't risk it on the D-train after a game neither, to be honest.)    

So why am I a baseball fan?  Three reasons.  (1) I actually played it back in the day.  Sure, now I have trouble throwing a ball ninety feet, but I played the real thing, unlike football.  I think I played tackle football maybe, like, twice in my life, and even then it was way way watered-down because we used neither pads nor helmets and I am still here to talk about it.  (2) I understand baseball.  People who don't understand baseball won't admit this, but the game is actually simpler than football.  And (3) ... history.  Baseball's just got hella more history than football. 

Which brings me to nostalgia.  I rarely give Brink Lindsay props.  After all, he has no idea what really caused the Great Compression, mistakenly believes that the Democratic Party lost white male votes outside the South during the 1960s and 1970s, and claims that the Great Society contributed to "an explosion of crime, urban riots, family breakdown, and welfare dependency."  But he did say one very very clever thing about nostalgia for the 1950s, when baseball ruled supreme, and today's political debates:

"Republicans want to go home to the United States of the 1950s, while Democrats want to work there."

True or false?