Since 2003 my wife and I have made an annual pilgrimage to Boston, USA to visit our elder son, our daughter in law and (now) our two Bostonian grandchildren. In the process we have been inducted into some of the ways of sport in America.
We have been to Fenway Park for the Red Sox, to Gillette Field for the Patriots (‘the Pats’) and to The Garden for the Celtics. To date we have not been to a Bruins game and, frankly, it is not on our bucket list. Silly bloody “sport”!
We love the rituals associated with the Sox and the Pats.
Fenway Park is both the oldest and the smallest ballpark in the USA, from memory holding around 37,000. Its seats would have to be the hardest anywhere in the world.
The stand opposite the plate is called The Green Monster and it is every player’s wish to hit a home run into the Green Monster.
The Sox play about 150 games a season, perhaps half of those at Fenway Park.
Before the game we wandered in the adjacent street which had been closed off. We ate an Italian sausage sandwich with fried onions, washed down by a can of Budweiser (‘Bud’) while listening to a jazz band and watching a clown on stilts entertain the crowd.
Halfway through the 7th the game stops while the mob sings “Take me out to the ball game”. I believe this is common in baseball in the States.
Halfway through the 8th the Fenway mob sings “Sweet Caroline” with standardized hand gestures.
Jonathan Papelbon is currently the so-called “closer pitcher” for the Sox. His mission is to restrict scoring by the opposition towards the end of their innings.
When Papelbon goes to the mound the tune “I’m shipping up to Boston”, from the movie “The Departed”, is played through the sound system. We’ve seen little old ladies dancing in the aisles to this music.
When the Sox eventually broke “the curse of the Bambino” (a great story) to win the World Series, Boston went nuts.
Some people placed notes on the graves of parents and grandparents, typically worded to the effect: “The curse has finally been broken, Grandpa”.
The Patriots’ home ground is Gillette Field, about 45 minutes out of Boston. It holds around 85,000 people and has a truly massive car park. We were fortunate to be guests in a corporate box on the halfway mark so we had a good view. It really was amazing to see something like 44 players from each side run onto the field.
The Pats game that day was the main game on Fox TV. We were astounded to see the game stopped by the head umpire at the direction of the television producer when he called ad breaks.
I remarked to our host that an Aussie crowd would trash the grandstand if that happened. Mind you, the AFL has become coy about restarting a game after a score.
Hours before game time for the Pats thousands of people rent car spaces in the car park ($30 a space on the day we attended). They park cars, pickups, even trailer homes in their spaces and set up barbecues, even four hours before kickoff.
When we arrived at the ground there would have to have been perhaps 8,000 barbecues operating, all kinds, simple to complicated. All but the designated driver doing some ‘drinkin’, naturally. This practice is called ‘tailgating’. Lots of fans continue tailgating after the game.
When the Pats score a touchdown a line of Minutemen, dressed in traditional farmer costume from the eighteenth century, fires a volley of shots from muskets.
Boston, of course, was the seat of the American War of Independence, and the Minutemen were among the early exponents of guerilla warfare, in the thick of the early action. The ‘Minutemen’ are another great story.
I’m not sure about the numbers playing junior baseball, footy or basketball but I have observed the incredible popularity of soccer, among boys and girls of school age in America.
Hey, supercoach? Choose your own ultimate NFL team and compete with other players for cash prizes in daily competitions on any match. If you’re after the best odds on the NFL, PlayUp is your best bet. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.
The extraordinary episodes after his life as an American Football hero quite overshadowed the career of O.J. Simpson, who has died at the age…
The Kansas City Chiefs, steered brilliamtly at the end by star quarterback Patrick Mahomes, downed the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in overtime to secure…
San Francisco 49ers will make their eighth appearance in the Super Bowl after a stellar season from a team stacked with real talent across the whole line-up.
The Chiefs are no longer strangers to playing matches in February. What was once a multi-generational 50-year drought has become an almost yearly tradition.
Daniel Faalele and Mitch Wishnowsky have kept their Super Bowl dreams alive, with Baltimore and San Francisco winning the divisional round playoff.
Six-time NFL champion Bill Belichick has agreed to part ways as the coach of the New England Patriots, bringing an end to his 24-year…
