| For
the past two weeks by 10am almost every morning I've been
seated on a bar stool in the Cheers Bar on George Street,
Sydney. It's not that I'm attempting to make a charge for
'the big leagues' in the alcoholism stakes (though that
would perhaps fill up my resume as a 'struggling writer'
a little more adequately), but rather, I've been braving
the beer'stenched carpet and stale air of a downstairs twenty-four
hours sports bar because of my beloved Boston Red Sox baseball
team.
 I
love American sports, but I am especially devoted
to all teams New England. Whether it be basketball's Boston
Celtics, the NFL champion Patriots, the psychopathic Bruins
in the ice hockey or the Red Sox playing baseball, just
signal me to the fact that one of their games will be on
local television and I'll show you a fool that can manage
to stay up through 3am to 8am in Australia just so he can
see the Patriots thump all comers on the football field.
And yet surely this is an odd condition for a guy who was
raised in Bathurst in country New South Wales?
Well,
I suppose it is and isn't.
I
was born in Athens to a Greek father and an American mother.
Immediately then, I was brought into the world as half-Greek,
half-American. Unfortunately, when your entire family ups
and leaves the Northern Hemisphere and decides to settle
in Australia and, of all places, Bathurst (a.k.a 'Home of
the Big Race'), things start to get a little more complicated.
Upon becoming an Australian citizen a few years later, I
became a Greek-American-Australian. Or an Australian-American-Greek.
Or was it an American-Greek-Australian? Damn. You see my
problem here? By all rights it would completely understandable
if one day I finally cracked and you found me lying nude
in a vat of olives, singing the Battle Hymn of the Republic
and ranting between verses about how "... if ya don't drink
beer, ya must be a poofta!"
Well,
we're not there just yet. The fact is though, being a mutt
can be very annoying. Three distinct groups of family and
friends on three different continents. Three citizenships.
Three passports. Hell, three different allegiances. What
naturally happened with me, especially where family members
were spread throughout the globe, was to try and keep as
strong a connection with those various roots as possible.
One way is, of course, to make your presence felt, and over
the years I've visited Greece and the United States as often
as possible. I've kept up my Greek language skills, and
I've tried to become as familiar with the city of Boston
as possible so I might truly consider it another 'home away
from home'. I plied my grandparents for as much information
about my heritage and as many family tales as possible.
And I followed sports.
Sports
gave me something to talk about with the patrons in my
grandmother's bar in Peabody, Massachusetts, and sports
gave me a free cab fare in Athens a few years ago when
I impressed the driver with my knowledge of the AEK football
team. Whether offering an explanation of rugby to a red-beret-wearing
Guardian Angel on a Boston train or joining a Greek labourer
in discussing the prospects of a local basketball team
at a café in Piraeus, sports can definitely make
you feel a part of the community.
 So
anyway, the whole point of this rather long-winded spiel
about my garbled ethnicity is that over time I didn't
just start to support some of these teams, I started to
literally obsess about them. My own daily moods rose and
fell with the fortunes of the team. If in a typical day
Greece lost the soccer in the morning, the NSW Waratahs
won the rugby in the evening and the Boston Celtics lost
overnight, you might as well hand me a glass of water
and a Midol because I'm matching any hormonal woman swing
for swing. Which brings me back to the Boston Red Sox
and baseball.
I
realise this is my very first weekly column for the Cud,
and to be honest, I originally had high hopes for what
I might be able to offer. Perhaps something on the value
of an independent media. Something on the value of rhetoric,
or a commentary on one of the more pressing current affairs
issues facing Australia today.
But
you know what? With enough celebratory beers currently
under my belt at three in the afternoon on a sunny Thursday
afternoon to hell with the profound and the incisive,
because today my beloved Boston Red Sox won the
baseball World Series.
I
could offer you all sorts of details about the remarkable
fashion in which we swept the St. Louis Cardinals in four
games. And of the phenomenal comeback against the New
York Yankees in the previous playoff series, overcoming
a 3-0 game deficit by winning four straight to make the
final (something no other baseball team had ever accomplished).
I could talk of the larger, historical significance of
the Red Sox victory. I could tell you things about an
alleged 'Curse of the Bambino', drop names like Pesky,
Dent and Buckner. Try to explain to you how much misery
this team has endured over the years since last winning
a World Series Championship back in 1918 (and yes, you
read that correctly 'we hadn't won in 86 years).
That there were grown men whose only wish was to see their
team win the title once 'just once' in their lifetime
that they might finally die in peace. But this kind of
information, if it hasn't already been repeated ad nauseam,
can be offered elsewhere in far better detail by far more
qualified journalists and sportswriters than I am.
Instead
all I'll offer is this: today I feel a little closer to
Massachusetts. As I type, I can almost hear my cousins,
aunts and uncles screaming in excitement at their television
screens and popping the champagne corks. I'm sure my recently
departed grandmother 'ever the Red Sox fan' made sure
to lend the team a little extra luck this year that they
might finally get this much anticipated win. I can see
all the old patrons of the Warren Lunch, wherever they
might be, toasting this success with gusto. And I can
see the city of Boston finally take a deep, satisfying
breath as we're liberated of all talk of curses, misfortune
and missteps for good.
So
to hell with the profound and the incisive and at least
for this column, humour me a little, because today I'm
all Boston. And with that in mind please excuse me, as
I'm starting to itch for another beer at a bar just down
the road where twenty drunken Boston ex-pats, backpackers
and local converts-to-the-cause are currently roaring
in celebration, and it's time for me to go.
Maybe
tomorrow I'll check back in with my other two-thirds and
see how we're doing in the cricket.
When
Evan isn't busy obsessing over the Red Sox, you can check
in every Monday for the latest edition of Ezy Reading.
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