The comfort factor involved in the American sporting world

The NBA, NFL, NHL and all the other ‘American sporting blah blah’ that played on ESPN, were constantly the ones that featured in my list of the ‘events to watch on TV’, during the early mornings of my High school and College days back in India. It used to be a routine thing for nearly 8 years!

I can’t forget the days when I used to get up at 5:30 AM in the morning to catch a train to be in time for attending the first class in college. Taking a shower so early wasn’t enough to wake me up from my much cherished sleep! The commentary of an American sport, the fresh aroma of mom’s coffee along with the sumptuous breakfast and an occasional glare from my dad (which signified something like calling me a crazy dude watching a sport where he couldn’t figure out the heads or tails of what was going on!) was ready to set me off in a right mood to college to learn my Chemical Engineering lessons.

The train journey was a long one! We had an amazing train gang whom we enjoyed traveling with and discussing events around the globe. Since I have always respected sport and admired the sportsmen who display their character by physical endurance and mental toughness, the majority of the conversations that I have enthused involved sport in someway. Majority of the Indians, restrict the word sport to an exclusive term called ‘Cricket’! And for more than 25 years now, Cricket is a religion rather than being a sport in the Asian subcontinent. Not many Indians would like a sporting conversation discussing something deviating away from Cricket. But, some of us in the gang were trying hard to learn the rules of the American sports. Although most of the crowds watching the sport were more interested in the catchy team names, the flashy outfits and the gorgeous cheerleaders, some of us were making an earnest effort to learn the game.

Some of us partially succeeded in learning the rules of the sports being played. But, I have learnt a lot in these two years after coming to the USA. In most of the cases there is an obvious compulsion on having to watch and learn the sport being played here, as we do not get an opportunity to see Cricket/Field Hockey in the Channels on TV (This sometimes drives me nuts). In addition to learning the sport, I also had an opportunity to analyze some of their sport right from the roots they originated and how the Americans added few ingredients in them to make it a commercial and entertaining.

I would like to leave out Basketball in this conversation as it is completely an original American sport that is appreciated and played all over the world. Even though some of us are not familiar with all of its rules, the sport continues to enthrall people around for its speed, excitement and its simplicity.

After getting to watch two complete seasons of American football and also succumbing to become a mad ‘Greenbay Packers’ fan made me study deeper into the origin of this beautiful game. American football wasn’t by any mean an original American sport. In fact, it is a game that was formed by a combination of rugby and soccer rules together. Since, both soccer and rugby were an Englishman’s sport, the Americans decided to alter both of them to bring in the evolution of a new sport. The rivalry between the English and the Americans is a unique one! The American always believed in being original, and in this process they started altering the English traditions in order to maintain their originality and assert their supremacy. Right from the system of units used the lanes of driving automobiles, the accent and spellings of the English spoken and written etc etc….the two nations have always had their differences. Sport wasn’t spared either.

Although I love the game of football, I notice the comfort factor involved in this sport. From what we see, Football and Rugby look very similar! The same amount of stress is involved and considerable physical endurance is required. But, why in the world would American footballers wear so much of protective gear when the rugby men are able to manage with protection only for your shin? The Australian version of Rugby is called ‘Aussie rules football’. Even in ‘Aussie rules football’, the players do not seem to wear any protective equipment as compared to the NFL. Both Rugby and ‘Aussie rules football’ can get nasty and gruesome at times! And after seeing a few games of Rugby, I highly doubt if any of the American footballers can handle Rugby.

Getting to the comparison of squash and racquetball, we find squash was invented in Harrow school (England) around 1830. Racquetball was invented by Joseph G. Sobek in Bridgeport, CT during the 1940’s. Squash and racquetball are played on the same type of courts, but the racquets and balls are different, which result in slightly different paced games. In squash, you use a long racquet similar to a badminton racquet, and the squash ball is very small. In racquetball, you use a much shorter racket, but with a broader head (imagine crossing a tennis racket with a ping pong paddle). The rubber ball is significantly bigger, somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball. Also, in squash, there is a vertical limit on how much you can hit the ball. So, considering the size of the ball which makes the speed of the game much faster and keeping in mind the size of the bats and the limit in the squash court, racquetball is much easier to play! Squash players would excel when playing racquetball, but racquetball players would struggle in a squash court.

The national game of India is field hockey. Even though Cricket is my first love, I still admire the Indian hockey team and some of its players for the amount of commitment and dedication which always goes unnoticed due to the dominance of Cricket. Ice Hockey is the American version of field hockey. The origin of ice hockey is unknown, but the rules of modern ice hockey were devised by Canadian J G A Creighton. In 1875, the first game of ice hockey with Creighton's rules was played in Montreal, Canada. There is not much a difference in both of these sports except for the ice, the heavy protective gear and the puck, but field hockey looks much more graceful and much more elegant when compared to ice hockey. And, field hockey doesn’t have circumstances where two players end up having a boxing match in the middle of the arena.

Coming to my most favorite part of this blog, I’ll discuss about Cricket and Baseball. Americans began playing baseball on informal teams, using local rules, in the early 1800s. By the 1860s, the sport, unrivaled in popularity, was being described as America's "national pastime." Whereas, the first reference to cricket being played is thought to be in 1300, between Prince Edward and his friend Piers Gaveston and the first recorded match took place at Coxheath in Kent in 1646. The first match between counties on 29th June 1709, when Surrey played Kent at Dartford Brent.

From the dates, the history and the similarity of some of the rules, Baseball, looked as an obvious inspiration from Cricket. From being an ardent cricket fan and an active cricket player, I feel the baseballers miss quite a lot! An English commentator once called the baseball players as “sissies who cannot catch a ball without gloves”! That is something that puzzles me till date! I started playing cricket from a tender age of 9. And right from 9, we used to play the game with the hard leather ball which could hurt u really bad! The ball was hit real hard at us and we were expected to catch every ball without wearing any sort of protection in the hand. And here in USA, the baseball players have a much softer ball and they wouldn’t dream of catching it without a huge glove! This reminded me an incident last week when we guys were playing cricket with the leather ball, and a group of footballers where playing in the field beside ours. We had a huge African American guy walking up to one of our guys who was fielding in the deep and starts a conversation something like this:

“Hey, Yo man wassup? Are you guys playing cricket?”
The guy sez “Yes”
“What speed does the ball come at you?”
“Maybe 70 miles an hour”
“And u guys catch it with bare hands??”
“Yes”
“What??? U dudes r crazy”

Seeing this made me laugh!

The other thing about baseball is, you have the batters clobbering the ‘full toss’ ball to the different places of the park. But in cricket, you have the batsmen facing the pitched ball. The pitched ball can behave dangerous at times. The Bowlers have the option of swinging it and spinning it which makes even the slow bowlers deadly at times. As a matter of fact, the top bowlers in the world of cricket are slow spin bowlers! If cricketers are given a chance to play baseball, I’m supremely confident that the crowd can witness a lot more homerun’s than of now.

Getting off from any particular sport now, I just wanna discuss on some of the terminologies used by the American sporting world for years. Right from NFL, NHL, NBA and whatever local league that the Americans own, the winners are automatically termed as ‘World Champions’! I accept that all these sports are from America and these guys have a patent on them. But still, when you consider that Argentina thrashed USA in the Olympic basketball tournament and teams like Korea can flawlessly defeat USA in the ‘World Baseball Classic’, there must be some explanation about the terminology used in the American sporting world.
There are teams which can beat the local teams black and blue in their own backyard. So, the best thing would be to prove the whole world that they are ‘World champions’ or more simply by renouncing the term ‘World Champions’ when winning the local league.

So, even after enjoying the American sports to the core, I still am more inclined towards the English sporting world. Those are the sports which test your true character, mental ability and physical endurance!