Baseball in China
Metro goers heading east on the 1 line at 4:30 pm last Saturday watched in bemusement and maybe some consternation as the crowd of twenty-something, inebriated and mostly Americans belted out “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” loudly, unabashedly yet amazingly on-key, fulfilling in that instant every stereotype harbored by foreigners against Americans. They are loud, they always wear jeans and sneakers, and they sure love this sport called baseball.
On March 15 and 16, the LA Dodgers and San Diego Padres came to Beijing to play two matches. The relatively cheap tickets -starting at 80 kuai ($11.32)- were quickly “sold out” for both games, which was half a marketing gimmick and half the result of corporate buy outs. In truth, there were still large sections of empty seats that defied the “sold-out” label, and our friend Jack who did advertising for the event told us that by the 5th inning, free tickets were being handed out to anyone with a Western face. However, the turnout on that sunny, spring weekend was still phenomenal. The 12,000 people that attended the games over last Saturday and Sunday were fully aware that they were participating in a historical experiment; the Wukesong Stadium will be the official baseball venue for the 2008 Olympics. The matches were not just an MLB breakthrough in expanding the sport to China, but an initial test of Beijing’s ability to host the Games in terms of infrastructure, coordination, security and assembly of thousands of avid sports fans in one spot. Unfortunately, this first test did not bode well for Beijing.
To start, the Wukesong stadium was touted as being a renovated and modern baseball stadium, worthy of being an Olympic venue. However, at first sight we were immediately filled with trepidation as to the safety of the stadium, which looked, as one friend commented, “like it was built out of tinker toys and finished yesterday.” Granted that it probably will never be used for baseball again after the Olympics -especially in light of the fact that this year’s Olympics will be the last time baseball is an official sport- we were still quite thankful that our seats were in the third row and not the nose-bleeds. We also learned later that management had rectified the field’s dying, brown grass by spray painting it green. From MLB.com, this is what players said about it:
“It looked like [artificial] turf when I first stepped on it,” said infielder Ramon Martinez. Manager Joe Torre said that the field appeared to be “quick but fine — I don’t think it’s dangerous. It will be like playing on turf — a ball in the gap will go to the wall.”
Secondly, logistics and management for the game on Saturday failed miserably. The game started at 1 o’clock, yet at this time only 10% of the audience was actually inside the stadium. The rest were standing in unmoving long lines, growing increasingly disgruntled and frustrated at the immobility. 75% of the spectators were still waiting to get in when muffled cheers broke out at 1:15 signaling that the teams had taken the field. The culprit? Poorly planned security measures and only one small entrance for thousands of spectators. By 1:30 security was all but abandoned as the guards just started waving people in through the metal detectors in one continuous stream of beeping. Water bottles ceased to be a security threat, and my bottle of soup was only curiously examined before being put back in my bag. We finally got to our seats at the beginning of the third inning.
Beijing did get lucky in one way however, the weather was undeniably beautiful -clear, blue, sunny, breezy, intoxicating. The crowd was full of energy and excitement, cheering at pretty much everything. Although the Chinese don’t know the rhythms to “We will Rock You,” and other clapping melodies, often messing up the rhythm for the rest of us, they were quite good at the “wave” and soon learned to yell “charge!” at the end of one particular melody. American traditions were a little distorted as Korean cheerleaders came onto the field in between innings and did a few booty-wiggling routines to Beyonce wearing glittering red undies and cowboy boots, and most of the audience watched in puzzlement when “Friar Boogie,” the Padres’ mascot, came onto the field doing pelvic thrusts and more booty wiggling.
The event was coated with multiple layers of meaning and significance: it was an MLB breakthrough, an important display of cultural exchange, a preliminary test of Beijing Olympic infrastructure, a worrisome potential public platform for protests and demonstrations, a PR blitzkrieg. It was all of these things, but for the group of young Americans singing on the subway after the game, it was simply a fun time and a taste of home.
