South Africa's Favorite Pastime

my sister and I at a classic @ Fenway, the Sox vs. the Yanks

My son Nick is a true sports fanatic. He loves watching all sports all the time. And not just the team sports he's played himself like ice hockey, football, baseball, and soccer. He will watch anything. And if there isn't a game on, he will listen to ESPN talk about the game that was and the game that will be.

I consider myself lucky because my husband is not an all-sports fanatic like Nick. Even though Vince played ice hockey and football in high school and college, I am luckily neither a hockey nor a football widow. However he is a rabid baseball fanatic, specifically the New York Yankees, which just may be worse than both of them combined.

Vince has been a dedicated Yankee fan since childhood even though he grew up in America's Heartland far from the streets of the Bronx, the Yankees' home turf. Maybe it is because his mother was from the Bronx. Or the fact that her brother and nephew were both one of New York's Finest and their beat was ... Yankee Stadium!

When Vince moved to New York after college to work at Bell Laboratories and study engineering at Columbia University, the stadium was just a quick train ride away. His relatives would sneak him into the stadium whenever they were working during the season. Later on, after Uncle Anthony and Cousin Sal had each retired from the police force and moved to Florida, Vince and my brother, another die-hard Yankee fan, brought season tickets for all the Saturday home games. Every Saturday, when the Yankees were home, Vince and Bob brought our sons, Alex and Nick, and Bob's daughter Tori to see the Yankees play in their Cathedral in the Bronx.

Captain

It is a commitment to be a baseball fan - or even the spouse of one. Opening Day at Yankee Stadium is in early April. The Yankees usually play about 162 games per season until the end of September.

ticker tape parade for the 2009 World Series Champions

Then there is post-season play and the World Series. For most of the years we've been married, that meant the Yankees played through October. If Vince did not go to the games, he watched them on TV or more likely he listened to them on the radio. Every single one of them. You do the math.

But now we are in South Africa. No real baseball here. South Africa's answer to America's favorite pastime is cricket. Vince has been trying on cricket, watching it on television while he tries to figure out the rules and especially the impenetrable statistical scorecard. I think of cricket as kind of like methadone for a baseball fanatic. It has helped to ease the pain of leaving his beloved Yankees habit behind.

with Ros and friends

So when I met Ros a few months ago at a Jobug meet-up event she was running, I knew I had to have her meet up with Vince and arrange for the two of them to sit together at a cricket match.

Ros has an incredible job for a self-described cricket fanatic. She is a cricket scorekeeper who started her career working for the South African Cricket Association. She also freelances her way around the cricket world and has worked for other cricket countries such as the Indian Cricket Association. And she is a website editor for South Africa's largest sports channel so her expertise is not just limited to cricket. And if that is not enough, she also works for the Soccer World Cup organization.

Awesome. Vince meet Ros. Ros meet Vince.


We went with Ros last night to see South Africa play Pakistan in a Twenty20 Test Match at the nearby Wanderers Stadium.

Now I am not even going to pretend I really know the difference between a test match and an international one day match and I couldn't reliably tell you exactly what an "over" is.

All I know is that Vince sat next to Ros at the match and proceeded in rapid-fire succession to question her about the nuances of the game all night long. She had all the answers.

scorekeepers hq

The game was called because of rain after a couple of hours play. South Africa 153 for 7 (de Kock 43) beat Pakistan 60 for 2 by four runs (D/L method). I don't really even understand the score!

But before I encourage this new habit for Vince, I am going to have to find out how many games the South African Cricket team plays and how long their season is.