Take Me Out To The Ballgame....

I wish. 'Tis the beginning of the 2010 Major League Baseball season and I have as much chance of seeing a game "in the flesh" as I have of being elected to Parliament. (No, I'm not standing, the British People don't deserve me).
All is not lost, however, as for a hundred of their American dollars, our chums in the former colony will let me watch every game on my computer in glorious high-def. Well, slightly jerky high-def sometimes, but it does the job. But why would I want to? Especially given that I have never been remotely hooked on Soccer or any of our other sporting religions.

I first watched baseball in the bar of a Howard Johnsons in Flagstaff Arizona in May 1992. We were on a three week roadtrip, had just seen the Grand Canyon and were "enjoying" the heaviest rainstorm they had seen in those parts for years, if not decades. I remember that the San Francisco Giants were playing but not who against. I had only a rough idea of what was going on, but remember seeing a bat get broken (an increasingly frequent occurrence these days, it seems) and liking the generally gladiatorial relationship that develops between batter and pitcher.

Fast forward to August 2006 and I'm slumped on a bed in a barely-large-enough-for-four-people "family room" at the Toronto Sheraton. The other three are all fast asleep (photographic evidence exists!) and I'm watching the Toronto Blue Jays (the only non-American team eligible to play in the World Series) struggle in Cleveland against the Indians. I've already watched parts of a game in the hotel bar and been down to the Rogers Center (the Jays' ground) to visit the club shop and get a proper baseball cap. Can't pretend I understand everything, but I'm beginning to appreciate how much more than a game of rounders for grown men (the popular view in the U.K.) this is.

When I'm really hooked is in October of that year when I realise that Channel Five is broadcasting the World Series - a best of seven games competition between the winners of the American and National leagues - live, and while I'm not mad enough to watch live between midnight and 5 a.m., I record the lot.

Five's coverage of the World Series was exemplary. Whilst carrying the feed of gameplay and commentary from the U.S., the frequent commercial breaks for changes of innings and pitchers allows the presenters in a shoebox studio somewhere in London to explain exactly what's going on to the uninitiated, and to present packages of background material on the history of the game, the food on offer at different stadia and anything else that might make the viewer feel involved. All too quickly, though, the Detroit Tigers fall to the St Louis Cardinals and the presenters bid farewell until the next season begins in April 2007. It's a long wait.

In the meantime, however, we've booked a visit to Mickey and friends in Orlando, coincidentally at the same tiome as our friends, the legendary Lurchees of Longlevens. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. It becomes apparent that halfway through the fortnight, Major League Baseball will recommence and that aside from the Florida Marlins based in Miami (too far from Orlando), there's another MLB team based in Tampa Bay, the Devil Rays. The Rays stadium is an aging dome in St Petersburg, across a causeway from the City of Tampa, which means we can't get rained on, so NL and I agree to check it out, booking tickets for opening day before we leave home.

A week of the Mouse and his mates and I'm really looking forward to something different.I could do without the drive, but it's easy enough, just dull. As is the tradition, I get us there way too early, but that gives us a chance to soak up the pre-game atmosphere. In the ring that surrounds the auditorium there are the inevitable bars and foodstands and the club shop selling everything from full replica team gear and accessories to almost anything else that you could stick a Devil Rays logo on. I get some more caps! There's also a batting cage and a chance to have the speed of your pitch measured, but it's an opportunity we forego. Suffice to say, pitching is a lot harder than it looks!

Coincidentally, the opening game of the season is against the Toronto Blue Jays, but I haven't brought that cap with me - not sure it would be good idea to be seen to be foreign and supporting the away team. I needn't have worried. The crowd turns out to be more like those you'd find at a cricket match - there might be banter if there were a significant number of visiting fans (there aren't), but the atmosphere is almost entirely positive. It's an evening game which may limit the number of children present. With first pitch at around 7 p.m. the game may not be over until approaching 11 p.m. and, as I later realise, the game goes on past the basic nine innings until there's a result, if necessary, so we could have been there all night!

As it was, the Devil Rays managed to grab a win on the last pitch of the ninth inning, having trailed for much of the game. Talk in the restrooms on the way out is all about how maybe this year it will be different. A relatively new franchise created in 1998, the Rays have almost become an embarrasment to their fans, having never enjoyed a "winning season" in which victories outnumber losses and only once crept above bottom of their five-team division. They are underdogs and look set to remain so, what with being in a division that includes the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, two of the richest teams in baseball. They can buy their way out of trouble while the Devil Rays' payroll, a relative pittance though still counted in millions, renders such a tactic impossible. It's like being Portsmouth set against Manchester United and Chelsea in soccer.

Where there is some hope, it transpires, is that the way professional sport operates in the United States is designed to even things out over the long term. The teams that do badly will then get first picks in the following year's draft of potential players from colleges and even high schools across the nation. They then try and agree terms with those players to nurture them in a "farm" system of professional Minor League teams affiliated to the Major League flagship. Sometimes, often, this comes to nothing. The prospective player may be unwilling to sign for the money on offer and even if they do, the majority will flounder at some point on the way through the hierarchy of Minor Leagues, never making it to the "Big Leagues" as MLB is known. A consequence of this is that the Devil Rays farms are filling up with promising talent for the future, but much of it still just looks good on paper. Still,on the strength of what I've seen, I decide I'll follow the Devil Rays from now on. At the back of my mind is that there is a lot more to be said for a repeat visit to Florida, at least on a family holiday, than there is for Toronto, which while interesting for a few days, does suffer from an inferior climate too!

Call it beginners luck or whatever, but by the end of the 2008 season the Rays, having dropped the "Devil" at the end of 2007, are Division Winners, then League winners and then..... and then they lose the World Series to the Philadelphia Phillies. O.K., it was a disappointment and for a moment I know for the first time what it feels like to see your team "let you down". But realistically it was a fantastic achievement, a complete reversal of fortune bigger than any by any team in decades. So after a slightly disappointing follow up last year (I'm tempted to blame injuries like a proper sports fan does), this year see a flying start, with the Rays the "winningest" team in baseball. Yes, that is a real word, coined by our cousins in the former colonies to describe the most succesful team. And as they would also say, GO RAYS!

Sadly, as a postscript I have to add that Channel Five cancelled their baseball coverage at the end of 2008, making the MLB's online service the best way of watching the game here (there is limited coverage available via satellite, but you can bet they wont show the game you want to see).