This book came out in 2003 — ‘Playing Hardball – A Kent County Cricketer’s Journey into Big League Baseball’. It seems like a good way to learn about the cultural differences between America and the British Commonwealth.
On baseball runs and soccer goals
Soccer goals probably constitute the highest valued currency in the world of sport, but baseball runs are not far behind.
Pitcher Vs the Cricket Batsman
The equivalent of the cricket batsman, then, is not the hitter but the pitcher. He lives in fear of conceding a run, of blotting his copybook, letting the side down.
Role of the coach
That is one of the differences between baseball and cricket, and more generally between American sports and what might loosely be called Commonwealth sports. In America, the flow of coaching advice never stops. In baseball, particularly, if the advice is tactical, the players have little choice in the matter; they do what they are told. A batter might be told not to swing at any pitch, in the hope of earning ‘a walk’ – so even if his dream pitch is coming towards him, he must control his instinct to hit it. For those of us brought up on the romantic ideal of sporting spontaneity, that seems a little restrictive.
On Technique
…if you ask any normal, untutored person to take a swing at a ball, the result will almost certainly look more like baseball or golf than cricket.
Technique, in cricket as in anything, is partly about training an unnatural instinct to feel natural. But much as I hate to admit it to Americans, the raw full-blooded violence of the baseball swing is much closer to primal human nature than the refinement of the cover drive. Bigger, brasher, bolder – it’s American. It is their Marlon Brando to our Cary Grant.
Getting hit
A baseball batter might get hit if he’s unlucky; a cricketer almost certainly will get hit if he hangs around long enough. It’s a rare macho advantage I always enjoy pointing out to Americans. Yeah, they bowl at your head all the time. All part of the game. You just get on with it…
Dual Allegiance
Pitching is like serving to stay in the match, every game, every day. Yes, the odds are in your favour. But the pressure is on your back. So, as a cricket batsman, my sympathies are divided at baseball games. In terms of skills, I feel much closer to the hitter. In terms of mental state, I feel much more affinity with the pitcher. It’s a dual allegiance I very much enjoy.
Stats in American sport
‘I’d love to be a coach of an American sport,’ one professional cricket coach once told me. ‘They don’t mess around.’ He is right. In baseball almost no statistic is inconceivable, nor any selection made without full reference to all the available evidence. The availability of critical evidence has a flip side for coaches : they haven’t got much chance of bluffing their players or the media. Bullshitters don’t last long.
Alltime greats
In cricket, we argue about who were the truly great players. In baseball, they vote on it – and the winners go to the Hall of Fame. It’s that black and white.
