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.
Adding the atmosphere, they do this thing called the “Kiss of the Game” during a commercial break, where the cameras will seek out couples around the stadium. Once they seem themselves on the jumbotron, they’re supposed to kiss. And they do. I don’t mean nice pecks or even a romantic beso; I mean full-on open-mouth macking of the sort that you probably still can’t show on network television. The few couples that choose to be more demure get booed.
It’s a hoot. Beats the dudes in the stupid costumes or those weird animated races that they put up during American games.
The level of play isn’t up to MLB standards. With all the Venezuelan players in the majors, and the sinking level of Venezuela salaries over the past two decades, that isn’t to be surprising. Once upon a time the Venezuelan leagues could keep middling homegrown talent and attract Americans to come down for off-season play — those days are long gone. Still, the play isn’t bad either. Call it AA. High pitch counts, very few home runs, Leones made six errors. The Magallanes pitcher held together a perfect game for four full innings, which wasn’t bad. A few dramatic double plays, a triple with a man on first (perhaps the most beautiful offensive play), a botched attempt to steal home. Magallanes won, 6-4. I’ve seen much worse from the Staten Island Yankees against the Brooklyn Cyclones. I was cheering for the Magallanes, because Sanánez was cheering for the Magallanes. Now, however, I am a fan, to the distress of my Caraqueño colleagues. (“But you’re a Yankees fan! The Leones are the Yankees! How can you be a Magallanes fan?”)
One thing that isn’t like Yankee Stadium is the beer-throwing. In that, it’s like a Mexican soccer match — although I’ve never seen anyone fling beer at a Mexican baseball game. Unlike, Mexican soccer fans, however, Venezuelan baseball spectators seem to dislike having fizzy alcohol water thrown on them. Thus, the growing gaps you see in the bleachers as the innings go on.
In a final note, I’ll say that no government official has come to a game since 2002. Before the coup attempt, the president would throw out the first pitch, and officials would regularly make it down to the Leones-Magallanes match ups, or whenever the home team was in town. That started to weaken in 1999, since Chávez was not popular among the class of people wealthy enough to purchase baseball tickets—they are not expensive, but Venezuela is very poor. After 2002, though, attitudes hardened, and officials stopped coming.
Something to think about whenever you worry about political polarization in the United States. Whether reassuringly or worryingly I leave as an exercise for the reader.
Soccer, by the way, is almost nonexistent here. When you ask people, they say, “It’s getting more popular,” but you don’t see anyone playing it and nobody seems to be following it, other than a vague awareness that the World Cup is coming. The President has been known to shout “offsides!” when he thinks his political opposition is out-of-line, but your average venezolano is about as able to define what that means as I was circa 1996. Which is to say, not at all.
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