Even though I'll still tell anyone who asks that "I live in Texas," the past 10 months have seen me spend the bulk of my time in North Jersey, working freelance for MLB Network, getting home for some family time for a short stretch of days each month. It's a far from ideal arrangement, one I'm sure I'll write more about in the future, but for today's purposes, I put those basics out there just to explain why I consider myself a "temporary New Yorker."
In my time here I've done many tourist-y things, and I still walk around NYC like a tourist with my eyes in the sky...mostly just cause I think skyscrapers in general are cool, but also because the city still enchants me whenever I spend time there (it also disgusts me from time to time, of course). So I was thrilled last week to get an invite to something I considered an unbeatable tourist opporunity: playing softball in Central Park.
I'm aware that just about anyone local who reads that is going to roll their eyes or at least think "What???" Just about anyone can go play ball in the park whenever they want, it's really not that big a deal, right? Well, I'm a West Coast 90s kid who grew up on Seinfeld, and for a lot of my life I never thought I'd visit NYC, ever. "The Understudy," where Jerry plays softball with a team from the Improv, and George (intentionally?) takes out Bette Midler while running the bases, is one of the classic Seinfeld episodes of all time!
Truthfully, rewatching it the episode now, I'm not sure that they're actually playing in Central Park! But I always assumed they were, and the episode always stuck out in my memories, and I always thought it'd be pretty cool to play a game in country's most iconic greenspace. Last week I got an invite to play in a company game, and even though I knew it would cost me a live viewing of Germany vs. Portugal, I jumped at the chance.
I gotta say I'm glad I did it, even though we lost and even though I'm not sure I could've played a worse game of softball (I actually struck out. In slow pitch. Enough said.). It was a beautiful day and I got a lot out of a little bonding with some co-workers I really enjoy. We somehow managed to play 9 full innings and score just 2 runs, so I was far from alone in my futility, but everyone had a good attitude and a great time.
Best of all, from the writeups and the highlight packages, the games in the Ukraine weren't all that much more exciting than the one in the North Meadow, despite the Group of Death hype. I can't really speak with authority as to how the teams looked, but I can say that Denmark will win a lot of matches if they can keep scoring first like that; Holland may have had 28 shots but that's an ultra-deceiving stat when only 5 are actually counted as "on goal"; It's tough to say where Germany's international reputation would be over the last 20 years if they didn't keep getting goals from half-Germans; and Boring, Boring Portugal.
As for the big upset, congrats to the Danes even though they knocked off my pre-tourney favorites the Dutch. I think Holland probably looked past this game a bit, to the bigger matchups they face later in the Group, and it hurt them. I absolutely LOVE this goals.com video of a Danish fan's weepy postgame celebration.
Obviously you can't hate on the guy for being excited, but what really gets me is the way it seems he's the only person there who seems to care about the result of the game at all! All those supposed soccer fans milling around outside the stadium and we could only find one face-painter? for shame!
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