Vince had never been much of a cricketer. He had taken five wickets, all clean bowled with full tosses, for six runs and those six runs off a single ball in one innings as a school boy. And his top batting score had been 57, although that had been in a backyard game with a tennis ball and he supposed that it didn't count. He had spent his last season, the year before he came to Japan, with a C-grade cricket team of the United Cricket Club. He didn't bowl a ball, dropped three catches and hit seven runs in 23 innings.
If he had been a baseballer, these might well have been quite respectable figures, but a batting average of less than a third of a run per innings was a pretty dismal record from any cricketer. Still, a lifetime of cricket had left its mark on Vince. He had cheered, after all, boyhood heroes like Bill Lawry, Rod Marsh, Dennis Lillee, the Chappell brothers and good old Thommo. And if he suffered any culture shock at all when he arrived in Japan, it was that he couldn't understand the appeal of their most popular sport.
Okay, the bowlers were fast in baseball, but they kept sending in full tosses. He could just see one of the better C-graders at United crunching the ball down through mid on or hooking it over the square leg boundary. And what were they aiming at? There were no wickets down the other end, so it had to be the batsmen or maybe the umpire, who was at the wrong end of the pitch any way.
Vince was quick to realise his own inadequacy. He was at a loss when the Americans at work spoke of screw balls and bunting to make first. He also discovered that Americans and Japanese alike were in the dark about cricket. One night, Osamu had called him up and explained that he had his Encyclopaedia of Sports on his lap with the page open at Cricket. He told Vince that he had a few questions:
"What's gully?"
Vince explained that he was a fielder who was there to stop late cuts and thick outside edges.
"What's late cut?"
Vince further explained that a cut was a type of cricket stroke which usually sent the ball out to the off side.
"What's the off side?"
The batsman, Vince assured Osamu, is always on the on side or leg side of the field. The other side or the bat side was the off side and this side changed according to whether the batsman was right handed or left handed. Surprisingly enough, Osamu seemed quite happy with this explanation, but by the time Vince had fielded further questions about silly mid on, second slip, third man, deep cover, deep square leg and the square leg umpire, Vince realised that it was impossible to explain cricket by its bits.
Osamu kept trying to compare the positions in cricket with those in baseball. Was the wicket keeper more like the catcher or first base man? Was long on another version of Centre Field? Vince began to comprehend that he couldn't possibly expect Osamu to understand the game that he loved so much without making some attempt to understand baseball.
He wanted to go to a baseball game with Osamu and had even managed to secure tickets, but the date clashed with one of Osamu's compost and manure meetings. Reluctantly, he took Connie instead. If Connie knew very little about baseball, she knew even less about cricket. She regarded all ball games, apart from tennis, as rather frivolous. She couldn't see the point of kicking a big ball around a football field or of hitting a little ball around a cricket field.
"Well, what about tennis?" Vince exploded one day. "What's the point of hitting a ball back and forth over a net?"
"It's very good exercise, that's the point," Connie snapped back. "You take cricket. Almost half the players are sitting around drinking tinnies on the sideline ..."
"They don't drink until after the game."
"That's what they tell you, but why else would XXXX brewery sponsor the Australian cricket team."
"Because they're celebrities. Why does Peter Stuyvesant advertise motor racing?"
"Probably because so many of the cars go up in smoke. But you're getting off the point as usual, Vince. While one half of the players sit on the sidelines, the other half are standing around a paddock ..."
"A field, not a paddock." "I'm sure a cow wouldn't know the difference, but they're standing around a field doing absolutely nothing. It's the slowest, most tedious of games."
"It builds character!"
"Hah, so Ian Botham has character ... and Richard Hadlee. If that's character, Vince, then it's better not built, if you ask me."
Still, Connie didn't complain when he suggested they go to the baseball, together.
"I've heard that it's very interesting."
"Oh, I thought you didn't like ball games."
"Oh, not the game! The fans."
If Vince didn't know what she was talking about, he was soon to find out when they arrived at Yokohama Stadium for a game between the Yomiuri Giants and the Taiyo Whales. Vince already knew that there were two baseball leagues, each with six teams, in Japan. The Pacific League was fought between the Nippon Ham Fighters from Tokyo, the Seibu Lions of Tokorozawa, the Lotte Orions from Kawasaki, the Orix Braves from Nishinomiya, the Daiei Hawks from Fukuoka, and the Kintetsu Buffaloes from Osaka. The Central League included the Yakult Swallows from Tokyo, the Chunichi Dragons from Nagoya, the Hanshin Tigers from Osaka, and the Toyo Carp from Hiroshima, as well as the Giants and the Whales.
The Giants were from Tokyo and were Japan's most popular baseball team. One third of all Japanese loved the Giants. A second third of Japan hated the Giants. And the final third just hated baseball. The Whales were Yokohama's own team and so Vince had made sure that he had bought tickets for the Taiyo side of the ground.
Yokohama Stadium, with its manicured playing area and six night lights, might just as well have been the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The most expensive seats were right behind home base, and the people who sat in them looked as staid and as conventional as those in the members stand at the Adelaide Cricket Ground or Lords. The further away from home plate you got, the more dyed in the wool were the fans. They made a fair parallel to the boys drinking tinnies on the hill at the Gabba or Bay 13 at the MCG, only quite a lot more polite and respectable in a very Japanese way about it all. While the area behind home base might have been neutral ground for supporters of both teams, the outfield had a clear line of demarcation between the Giants and the Whales, in the form of the scoreboard which offered action replays and statistics on the current player's batting average, the speed and the result of the last ball pitched, and the number of men out.
Each side had their own brass contingent in the outfield stands, two or three trumpets which were clearly off key, just like those at the cricket. Everybody was armed with megaphones and clappers, to beat out time to the chants. Each section of the stand had its own cheer leader, who was invariably male and filled the roll of a conductor, to lead the chanting. There was also the odd pom pom girl who didn't really to fit in with the rest of the throng, although everybody was glad she was there.
Try as he may, Vince could not pick up any of the words to the chant, apart from the batsman's name. The rhythm resembled The Beatles' "Ooblah di, Ooblah da". Whenever the ball sailed over the out field fence, a gasp of Ooooooh went up from both sides of the ground and once the home run had been confirmed, the scoring team's fans would clap five times twice and emit a single "yashoi".
There was some preliminary entertainment, when school boys of all ages got to pitch two balls at the Whales catcher, who dropped all but a couple. The first two boys must have been about six years old and their respective pitches didn't even make it to the home plate. Then, a celebrity, whom Vince recognised but couldn't put a name to, came out to pitch another two. He was one of the hottest acts of the year and would no doubt would be past it, the following year. He appeared as a bumbling fool in two or three dramas and on any game show that would have him. Vince knew him best from a show about a policeman who had to get married quickly. He had gone to a dating agency who kept trying to match him with the most unlikely girls. Anyone could see that he was going to end up wed to the woman from the agency. To Vince's mind, he seemed like a better pitcher than an actor.
Finally, the game was underway. The Giants batted first. Ueda faced the Whales' pitcher, Nomura. Vince saw Nomura's arm crook back and he resisted the urge to jump up and scream:
"Bloody chucker!"
Nomura was after all playing for his side. The Giants first innings showed that Vince understood even less about baseball than he had originally thought. Anything that looked remotely like a strike was called a ball and anything that looked like a ball was called a strike. One Giant made it to first base, but soon three were out and the Whales charged into the bunkers. Vince scratched his head. Perhaps, the Giants had declared. Still, it seemed a bit silly to declare after only making one run.
The Whales did slightly better. They had bases loaded by the time their third man was out. Each time a batsman came to the plate, his average would appear on the score board. .312 might very well have been an impressive strike rate, but it was totally meaningless to Vince.
By this time, it had started to rain lightly. Yokohama Stadium was not Tokyo Dome and there was no roof that slid across automatically in the event of such weather. Vince expected that the covers to come out at any second, and the super sopper to be raced onto the field. But no, they just kept on playing. Perhaps they didn't have covers or a super sopper, he reflected.
Vince had to wait for the Giants third innings before he saw his first home run. The American, Mossby, up for his third strike, hit one cleanly over the outfield into the Whales stand. The entire crowd oohed as it arced above them. Vince leapt up and cried:
"Six!"
Connie was most impressed when, a minute later, the Yokohama fans threw the ball back onto the field to the Whales right fielder, who took it across to the other side of the diamond and tossed it into the throng of Giants supporters.
"Now, that's good sportsmanship," Connie declared. "You'd never see that at a cricket match."
"At a cricket match," Vince growled, "you'd have to throw the ball back to the bowler wherever it landed. If you didn't, they'd have to find another ball just as old before play resumed."
A few minutes later, Hara hit the second home run and the Giants were leading, 4 - 0. The rain was coming down quite heavily by now and there was still no sign of the super sopper. Umbrellas went up and Vince found it difficult to keep his legs dry with the constant drip from the umbrellas around him. Mossby had hit his second home run in the fourth innings and it was looking rather dismal for the Whales until their fifth innings when they managed to get three home.
Somewhere in the Giants sixth innings, the weather reached hurricane proportions and although they were absolutely soaked, Vince was delighted to discover that they did in fact have covers and a super sopper. He looked at the puddles forming on the ground and shook his head.
"No," he told Connie, "they won't be playing again today. It'd take the Channel 7 chopper till morning to dry this lot out."
They scurried for cover and joined the crowds pressing to leave the stadium. A man with a loud speaker was telling everyone that once they were out, they couldn't get back in to watch the resumption of play. Vince had even noticed a few diehards huddled out in the rain, but he smiled at Connie and said:
"They'll be lucky!"
It was later that night that he discovered that they did actually finish the game, although the score remained the same at six for the Giants and three for the Whales. Vince shook his head in disbelief.
"Gracious! That must have been one hell of a super sopper!"