The Lingo of Bingo

Bingo. If you’re like me, the word conjures up images of seaside amusement arcades, largely populated by blue-haired old ladies. Sure, in Britain, there are bingo halls, but has anyone you know ever been in one? Still, our step-daughter Vanessa had been commissioned by her boss to investigate the game at a local casino – for reasons which, being honest, still remain kinda obscure to us. But it was a quiet Friday, and the prospect of spending the afternoon gambling at someone else’s expense, is not to be sneezed at. Sure, we’d prefer high-limit poker, but we’ll take bingo, if necessary.

So we headed out, only vaguely knowing what to expect. “What if there’s just the three of us playing?”, asked Vanessa. At 12:30 on a very pleasant Friday afternoon, it seemed like a valid question. At least, it was until we walked into the aircraft hanger which is the bingo hall at Fort McDowell Casino, and saw row upon row of players – and this was before the games had even started. We realised we would be far from alone. Except that is, alone in being born in the latter half of the 20th century.

Yes, while bingo in the UK struggles to escape the stereotypes, in the US, no such attempt is made and this is a game played by the near-dead. You may think I exaggerate, but I’m not joking when I say that we saw several people attached to oxygen tanks. This is probably partly because it is a remarkably cheap form of entertainment, and since you pay up front, you know in advance exactly how much you’re going to lose. We splashed out and bought the Level 2 books, which cost more and double the amount paid out, but you could play an afternoon session for as little as $5, and that would last a good three hours. Add in the free drinks and cheap food, and you have something that compares very favourably with, say, the cinema.

However, can’t say we found it a very social experience. There’s not much breathing space between the games, just enough time for them to check the winner’s card, and then it’s straight on with the next one. Even the games themselves were scarcely leisurely experiences: our buy-in got us eight cards per game each, and, especially at first, we struggled to keep up. Ten minutes in, I was feeling like a lab-rat, daubing out numbers in exchange for the slim chance of winning a piece of cheese.

And not all that big a piece of cheese either, especially in comparison to Britain, where jackpots are competed for across the whole country, and can create instant millionaires. Most games here had a maximum of $600, and if more than one person called “Bingo!” on the same number, the prize was split. Other differences: grids were five by five, with the center square a freebie always covered, and the numbers only went up to 75, rather than 90. No “two little ducks” either.

Adding to the complexity, we anticipated simplicity: play until someone gets five in a line, then go on to a big prize for the first to cover all their numbers. I think only one game was like that: instead, presumably to speed things up, you had to get a small subset of your numbers. For example, the four numbers in the top-right of your card, plus the left hand column and bottom row. These even had special names; that one was the “Love Letter”. There was also the “Hamburger”, the “Crooked Bow-Tie”, the “Semi-Erect Penis” and so on (okay, I made the last up), some of which could occur in more than one way.

And they had wild cards – one game, everything ending “9” was a freebie, in another it was every even number. So you had you to cross off numbers before the game, then as they were called, and then had to look at the resulting Pointillist abstraction, and try to work out if you were close to a winning combination. If so, the 2% of your brain not already burning up was then allowed to start getting excited.

Thank heavens for the little old lady sitting next to us with her husband, who took pity and explained what the hell we were supposed to do with the million pieces of paper in our game pack. She had the endless patience of a grandmother, serenely playing away, even as we quizzed her during the games (a serious breach of bingo etiquette, I’m sure). Without her, we’d have been dead in the water.

Speaking of “dead”, there was a scary moment at one point. We heard cries for help coming from another table, and paramedics (no doubt permanently on standby) rushed to the assistance of a player who was choking. “Ah, so that‘s the Heimlich maneouvre…”, I thought, having only ever learned it theoretically in my St. John’s Ambulance class. As Chris pointed out, not certain you’re supposed to lift the victim bodily into the air, but it clearly did the trick, and fatality was averted.

Two things impressed me: one, the rest of the players hardly noticed – must be an almost everyday occurrence, when you have several hundred old folk operating in a state of high tension for several hours. Even more amazingly, the victim went right back to her game. This did draw appreciative nods from the players around us – she was truly hardcore. Personally, if God dropped a bomb like that on me, I’d have taken it as a hint that this was not my lucky day.

Though given the frequency of good-luck charms throughout the hall, no-one was trusting to mere fate. Our deficiencies in this area are perhaps why it wasn’t our lucky day either. Chris let out a stifled shriek of “BIN…!” at one point, but that turned out to be a false alarm, and was rapidly converted to a clearing of the throat. Still, by the end, we were daubing away with the best of them, and indeed, were so into it that we were even discussing the possibility of a return visit. Now, we at least have a clue…

We are currently feeling rather smug about our neighbour to the West. While we in Arizona may have made some rather bad choices for our Governor (Fyfe Symington, forced to resign after being convicted of fraud – though eventually pardoned by Bill Clinton on his way out), we’ve never actually got rid of one mid-term. We were going to have a vote whether or not to dump Evan Meacham in 1988, for his misuse of state money and for cancelling Martin Luther King Day. But he was impeached before the election, avoiding the entertaining circus seen over the past couple of months in California.

You already know that Arnie won. You might also know about some of the other high-profile fringe candidates, such as Larry Flynt or Gary Coleman (probably the first time in decades Coleman and “high-profile” have appeared in the same sentence). But what about the fringe-of-the-fringe, citizens who gathered the requisite 65 signatures and $3,500 filing fee, but didn’t have so much fame or infamy already backing their campaign?

In the interests of a well-informed electorate (and a well-amused one), we at Trash City filtered our way through them, and bring you our favourites. Because of space, and an unwillingness to spend the rest of October working on this, we’ve discounted the Republican and Democratic candidates. Though not without some regret, given quotes such as “single adults are the Rodney Dangerfields of our society” (Rich Gosse), a voter statement that reads, in full, “I breathe” (Kevin Richter), or “former party girl turned Republican” candidate Reva Renee Renz, whose blog has some of the most entertaining pieces on the election I’ve read.

Equally, not every candidate running outside an established party, on an Independent ticket, was entertaining, amusing, or even interesting:

Jerry Kunzman	Bob McClain	Jack Grisham
Sara Ann Hanlon	Brian Tracy

Enough said, despite Mr. Grisham’s resemblance to Michael Madsen.

However, while some chose to decry the election – “a media circus with 135 clowns” – I found it a case-study of true democracy in action. Lack of finance should never be a bar to achieving representation, and the sheer number of alternative voices shows a deep dissatisfaction with the established system. Discounting the ‘official’ Democrat and two Republicans, the other 132 candidates totalled almost half a million votes. In these days of ever more homogenized news, I find this comforting – and to every one of those 132, I tip my hat.

#9 (10,949 votes) – George Schwartzman
“Although some attribute my success in part to my ballot position and somewhat similar name association with Arnold Schwarzenegger, be assured this was not the case.” Yeah, whatever. Perhaps part of his surprisingly good showing was because one of the main planks of his campaign was “the need to prohibit handheld cel phone usage when driving”. He’d certainly get my support there.

#10 (10,114) – Mary Carey
Following in the wake of Cicciolina, while Arnie’s sexual hijinks hampered his campaign, you know exactly what you’re getting with the star of New Wave Hookers 7. Contribute $5,000 and you can have a date with Mary, who supports legalizing ferrets. What they should be legal for, she doesn’t say. She would also create a ‘Porn for Pistols’ scheme to get handguns off the street, and tax breast implants.

#13 (5,915) – John Christopher Burton
Yes, they have Socialists in America. Just not very many of them. Featuring a bilingual website which is the Internet equivalent of horse tranquilizer, Burton is a civil-rights attorney, who “has specialized in defending victims of police abuse and discrimination”. Clearly going for the law and order vote then. His worthiness is probably exceeded solely by his dullness, which is so exceptional as to be interesting in itself…

#16 (4,864) – Gallagher
Only in America would celebrity status be granted to a man whose act consists, in the main, of smashing watermelons with a sledgehammer. Undaunted by his failure to make Governor, Gallagher – who like Sting, Prince and Satan, prefers to be known by only one name – is now preparing to run for President in 2004. Is probably more credible than most Democratic candidates.

#28 (2,262) – Angelyne
Also in the one-name group, is this Hollywood billboard queen, famous for…er, being famous. Perhaps the most imaginative proposal for dealing with the $38 billion deficit: “A room will be decorated in the Capitol building, for anyone who wishes to spend the night and get a personal tour of the building hosted by Angelyne, for the amount of $10,000.” Which would also get you two dates with Mary Carey. [18 years later, Angelyne also took part in the 2021 recall election, and did rather better, getting 26,444 votes, to finish 18th, as the top independent candidate!]

#33, #41, and #47 (2,007, 1,703 and 1,494) – Ned Roscoe, Ken Hamidi and John J. Hickey
One pleasing thing about the US system is you don’t need approval from a party to run as their candidate. Hence, there are no less than three Libertarians – they’re the group I’m probably most aligned with, whose basic concept is summed up in the quote, “the government that governs least, governs best.” Together, they’d have passed Gallagher for #16, though Roscoe seems mostly concerned about the rights of smokers to kill themselves (and anyone else within breathing room) – I’m sure this is in no way connected to his day job as a cigarette retailer…

#49 (1,454) – C.T.Weber
The candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party which is one of those ‘only in California’ organizations: “a multi-tendency socialist and feminist political party”. Doesn’t sound like the sort of party I’d want to go to. Also describes itself as “the only Socialist alternative”; John Christopher Burton (see above) might want to argue with them about that. Albeit in a peaceful and free way, of course.

#54 (1,288) – B.E.Smith
You’ll notice the lack of a link for this one. That’s because he was one of the very few candidates without an Internet site. Thrown into the 48-page voter’s information guide, we find Smith’s voter statement beginning, “I spent two years in federal prison because I grew medical marijuana for myself and others” – which probably explains both his lack of a website, and his photo (right). He promised to pardon everyone in prison for similar crimes, and if elected, would have refused a salary. But would probably accept compensation in Snickers bars.

#60 and #63 (1,121 and 1,029) – Iris Adam and Darin Price
Like the Libertarians, for some reason, there was more than one candidate from the Natural Law Party, thereby splitting the votes of those who like the idea of “yogic flying” [Somewhere at TC Towers, I still have a videotape of a most amusing Natural Law Party Political Broadcast] I think Adam was the official candidate, and if their votes were combined, they’d have placed in the top thirty. Guess even meditation can’t save a political party from discontented splinter groups.

#62 (1,080) – Trek Thunder Kelly
Voter statement in full: “Please vote for me, thus breaking the Seventh Seal and incurring Armageddon. I will legalize drugs, gambling and prostitution so they may be taxed and regulated; the funds derived would subsidize the deficit, education and the environment. I believe in peaceful resolution backed by a strong military; I don’t care who you marry or have sex with.” Wears only blue. Claims to sleep with socks on his hands, and only eat steaks and tacos. Candidature largely appears to be some kind of bizarre performance art.

#68 (927) – Diane Templin
No election would be complete without a religious fruitcake, and with comments like “May the Lord give you the wisdom of Solomon as you vote”, Diane is well qualified. Standing on behalf of the Independent Party (which seems like a contradiction to me, right up there with an Anarchist Party), who regard the census as an invasion of privacy. And probably a tool of Satan, as well.

#74 (734) – Kurt E. (Tachikaze) Rightmyer
A 39-year old who lists his profession as “Middleweight Sumo Wrestler.” Therefore, you will find no snide remarks, sarcastic comments or jokey asides about his candidature here. At least, not until the San Andreas Fault shifts, California is no longer connected to us here in Arizona, and we own Pacific beachfront property.

#115 (374) – Jeff Rainforth
The Reform Party was once viewed as the great hope for a third party in America, after Ross Perot ran for President in 1992, and got 19% of the vote. Ah, how the once-mighty have fallen – going on Jeff’s performance, by approximately 18.99%. Do like the ‘Politicians Suck’ shirt available through his site, though the message is somewhat muted by having ‘Rainforth for Governor’ emblazoned on the other side.

#135 (172) – Todd Richard Lewis
Lewis was one of the players in Bumfights, Vol. 1, where he ran around tying up the homeless while commentating in a fake Aussie accent. “The people of California will rise up in a grass roots campaign supporting The Bumhunter’s run for Governor and take back what’s owed to them – their dreams.” Dream on, Bumhunter: you finished last. Not just among independent candidates, but dead last. And deservedly so.

Like drive-ins and line-dancing, baseball seems a quintessentially American icon, a facet of the culture that has never quite caught on elsewhere. Yet the sport is more global in nature than might be suspected, and the international aspects have been around for almost as long as baseball itself. The origins are lost in the myth and mists of time, but legend has it that the first Mexican game took place at Jalapa in 1847, when American soldiers celebrated victory, using the artificial leg of defeated general Santa Anna as a bat. As early as 1878, Cuba had a league, with the proceeds funding rebels fighting for independence from Spain.

The spread of the game has largely been driven by American influence; for example, gold propectors brought Australia the game in the 1850’s. Due to this, baseball is most popular in areas with ties to the States: Central America, the Caribbean and the Far East. However, the record attendance for a game took place outside these strongholds, in Berlin, where over 120,000 people watched a demonstration match-up at the 1936 Olympics. More currently, the International Baseball Federation now boasts affiliates in 110 countries.

As well as exporting the game, America also imports players, drawn both by high salaries, and the opportunity to test their skills – the major leagues are universally regarded as the best in the world . Some deride the notion of a “World Series” involving only Canadian and American teams, but more than a quarter of the players currently in the major leagues were born outside the US, including natives of Australia, Germany, and even Englishman Lance Painter. This is not a modern innovation. Even in 1871, the first officially recognised season, history records ten players born in the British Isles, and Liverpudlian Tom Brown took part in more than seventeen hundred games while Queen Victoria was still on the throne.

Those in charge of the sport are aware of its international potential. “Baseball was born in America, but now it belongs to the world,” said commissioner Bud Selig, and the 2003 season was scheduled to start in Japan until the invasion of Iraq took place. The Montreal Expos are also playing several “home” series in Puerto Rico, pending a decision on where the team should go. Further down the road, plans have been floated to play in Europe at some point, probably in Italy, where there’s already a semi-pro league whose games are shown on regional television.

The task is not without pitfalls. Witness the failure of soccer to achieve mass popularity in the States, its place in public consciousness largely defined by Brandi Chastain’s post-penalty strip-tease. A quick straw poll revealed that many Americans are unable to name a member of their men’s soccer team, proving that people are averse to being told which pastimes to enjoy. Pure hype can work only in the short term. The London Monarchs won the 1991 World Bowl of American Football in front of 61,000 fans at Wembley Stadium; seven years later, barely five thousand watched the Monarchs’ final game.

Despite the potential for failure, the Arizona Diamondback players we spoke to all supported the idea of playing worldwide. It wasn’t just the rookies either: “I would love that,” said Mark Grace, a player now in his 16th major-league season. Similar opinions were echoed elsewhere – typical was infielder Craig Counsell’s reaction, “It’d be a fun experience.” Despite such enthusiasm, there were some doubts expressed as to whether baseball could displace soccer in European hearts, and reliever Mike Myers raised the possible financial implications, especially for small-market teams. But the challenges were still felt worth the risk.

There was less consensus over the best aspects of the game: how do you sell baseball, in a market where people aren’t familar with it? Most commonly mentioned was the strategy involved, and certainly, that’s part of the attraction for me. Both beautifully simple – throw the ball, hit the ball – and deliciously complex, “It’s a thinking person’s sport,” said Counsell, and David Dellucci described it as, “A chess match, with the manager using the players as pieces.”

Other factors came up: “No clock, and no ties”, was Mark Grace’s view. Counsell feels it’s a sociable sport, in that it can be a link between parents and their children, with time within the game for interaction and relaxation – “You can enjoy a beer and a hot-dog,” agreed Delluci. Mike Myers appreciates the way centimetres, and even millimetres, can be crucial, plus the uncertainty of the outcome until the very last pitch. Or as the immortal Yogi Berra said while managing the New York Mets, “It ain’t over, till it’s over.”

Catcher Chad Moeller brought up the importance of building interest from a young age. He enjoyed soccer as a child, so has an appreciation of the tactics and skills: “Good soccer players, like good baseball players, have been playing all their life.” Attracting kids is certainly significant, and perhaps Major League Baseball should consider building from the bottom up, rather than sending teams to countries which can’t fully appreciate them. It is possible to come to the game late and still love it – I didn’t see my first game until I was in my thirties – but if you grow up alongside baseball, the chances of enjoying it as an adult are much greater.

Moeller isn’t the only major league player with additional sporting talent. While growing up in the Dominican Republic, Sammy Sosa’s first love was cricket – had things been slightly different, he could be knocking balls out of the park for the West Indies team, instead of the Chicago Cubs.

Baseball is a wonderful sport, and there’s no reason why it can’t become as global as soccer. Perhaps eventually we’ll see the London Lions facing the New York Yankees, for a true ‘World Series’ place against the Hanshin Tigers. However, recent history cautions us that it’s best not to rush these things, organic growth offering the most secure route forward – anything driven solely by publicity is likely to leave the baseball cap as the game’s only contribution to international culture.

[Thanks to Susan Webner, Arizona Diamondbacks media coordinator, for her help with this piece]

Monster Jam 2003
Bank One Ballpark, Phoenix, AZ,
25th Jan. 2003

Few things are more American than spending the night before the Superbowl at a monster truck rally. This is the kind of event which could only take place in a country where petrol is a quid a gallon, and whose approach to global warming may be summarised as, “You can have our SUV’s when you pry the keys from our cold, dead fingers.”

The audience for these events seems to have a similar demographic to professional wrestling: mostly white, and blue-collar to the extent that you feel out of place unless you have a baseball cap with the name of a tractor manafacturer on it. Yet there is something almost primal about the event which awakens long-stilled emotions, though where we’d once cower in our caves while mastodons made the ground thunder, now we down domestic beers and buy T-shirts. Or maybe it’s just cool to see things get destroyed.

It’s a relatively new “sport”, its origins dating back to the mid-70’s, when Bob Chandler’s Bigfoot, a converted Ford F-250 pickup, debuted in Michigan, crushing cars to the delight of crowds. Racing these beasts only began in the 1980’s, and that was one central point of the night’s entertainment. Eight trucks, with names like Black Smith, Gravedigger, Monster Patrol and Obsession 2, faced off in head-to-head sprints: a dash, a hairpin turn, then powering over four junkyard-cars to the finish. Maybe 100 yards, in about six seconds, not bad for machines weighing the best part of ten thousand pounds.

The scale of these things was hard to grasp, until you saw the drivers beside them – ten to twelve feet high, the tires alone almost six feet of that. Seeing these creatures flying maybe eighty or ninety feet long and twenty feet up, is like seeing a whale breach the ocean. The noise, too, was about what you’d expect from a 1,500-horsepower, 575 cubic inch, methanol-fuelled engine, which uses up several gallons per run.

With three hours to fill, a supporting cast was needed, in the shape of autocross and quad bikes. The former was the less interesting of the two, since the track for that was a simple oval with three speed bumps in – tactics will be familiar to anyone who has negotiated a road with sleeping policemen on it, i.e. fast as you can between the bumps, then crawl over them. Doesn’t exactly make for enthralling viewing, though it was an object lesson on what can happen if you try to take these bumps too fast – your wheel falls off.

More amusing were the quad bikes, not least because it pitted “Team Arizona” against “Team California”. The wrestling analogy was particularly valid here, since we strongly suspect that tomorrow, the same drivers might be “Team Texas” or “Team Colorado”, and the thrilling way in which the home side won smacked strongly of careful pre-arrangement. Still, it was nice to see the drivers showing personality, something otherwise lacking in an event where the vehicles are clearly the stars (bonus points to one autocross driver for thanking his foot doctor though!).

The finale of the evening was the freestyle, where each monster truck was given 90 seconds and a clear arena to do whatever they wanted. More piles of old cars, buses and vans were laid around to assist in the process, and if you though the prior carnage was excessive, this would have caused some kind of seizure. Seeing something the size of an African elephant pop a wheelie at 60 mph is impressive, even if you’re not sitting in the seats towards which it is directly heading on two wheels.

It’s not the sort of event I could get hooked on, but will happily confess to having enjoyed the occasion, and driven home making surreptitious “Vroom-vroom” noises under my breath. The idea of steering one of these monsters round town does appeal – especially if that town was London. After all, who needs a parking space when you can simply run over the top of any vehicle in your way? No BMW, no Volvo, no busload of tourists could cross your path. And if that prospect doesn’t bring a smile to your face, go check your pulse…

or All Your Baseballs are Belong to Us…
or Why is a Brit watching anyway?

Phoenix is a city than runs by car; no-one walks anywhere. But last night, even allowing for it being Sunday, the roads were incredibly quiet: the local baseball team, the Arizona Diamondbacks were playing game 2 of the World Series, and the whole town, it seemed, was glued to the screen. Even I wouldn’t have been out except for parental duty, returning a visiting small child to its owner – with bad grace, and at a speed that would have been reckless, had not all Phoenix’s finest been in the donut shop watching the game too. It is painful to be dragged away from the screen, simply to stop the whining of someone who doesn’t appreciate the potentially once-in-a-lifetime nature of this event.

For my hometown team to be taking part was miraculous, as the Arizona Diamondbacks made it to the game’s ultimate showcase in just their fourth season. While I’d been supporting them since their inception (partly through proxy via Chris, partly through the Reuters feed at HSBC), it was my first World Series actually living here and there are cities which have gone DECADES without winning a World Series. No team from Chicago has made it this far in 42 years, while Boston last won the World Series in 1918. Boy, they must be pissed.

Particularly so, since history is part of the sport’s essence. It has far more than any other popular sport in America, with the first organised league forming in 1858. This may not seem particularly impressive, but is pretty good considering that basketball wasn’t even invented until more than thirty years later, and the first Superbowl took place as long ago as, er, 1967. Compared to this, baseball holds a unique place in the American psyche.

And in mine too. Chris and I attended about a dozen games this year, in addition to countless more on TV, the radio or the Internet. Their home, Bank One Ballpark, is a fabulous new stadium with a retractable roof, air-conditioning and a swimming pool in which spectators (albeit rich, corporate ones, mostly) can frolic during the game. It’s all very civilised – you can even get Newcastle Brown Ale on draft (albeit at a rich, corporate price) – despite the intensely irritating mascot, D.Baxter. The logic of a team named the Diamondbacks having a bobcat as a mascot escapes me entirely, and his smugly furry grin and childish antics are sufficient to get the most stoic animal-rights advocate reaching for a rifle.

To any statistically-minded individual (waves pencil in air), the game is a paradise, with RBIs, ERAs, slugging percentages and more decimal points than an accountant’s convention. But you can just sit there and absorb it – baseball is the sort of game that creeps up on you, until you suddenly realise you’re wondering whether the pitcher will lay down a sacrifice bunt, or if the manager will pull him for a pinch-hitter capable of going the other way against a hanging splitter, up and in. I appreciate that sentence probably made no sense to 95% of readers, and will try to restrain myself.

It also possesses a timeless nature, with games being open-ended, continuing until someone wins – however long this takes. And it can take a while; even the average game is around the three-hour mark, but earlier this season, we played eighteen innings – twice as long as a regular game – which took just shy of six hours. We won 1-0, and that wasn’t even the longest game played in the major leagues this year. Any sport capable of playing such utter havoc with TV schedules can only be loved.

In line with this languid approach is a regular season which lasts for a mere 162 games, followed by playoffs leading to the World Series, a best of seven matchup scheduled over nine days. Non-Americans tend to scoff at the term “World Series” given the only teams ever taking part come from the USA and Canada, but these days, the game is seriously international, with the two likely Rookies of the Year coming from Japan and the Dominican Republic. As mentioned, the Diamondbacks made it to this final showdown, after fewer years in existence than any team ever, but in American sport, less important than longevity is an owner prepared to plough lots of money into the club.

The D’backs have that – their owner also has the local NBA basketball franchise – but it was still something of a surprise, given most of the team are the wrong side of 30 (or in pitcher Mike Morgan’s case, 42) and seen as past their prime. We were given little hope, especially as our opponents are the New York Yankees, the Manchester United of baseball. Like the Reds, the Yankees are extremely rich, very successful, and hated by everyone outside their own city, and indeed a good chunk of those inside. [Just as United has City, so the Yankees have the New York Mets] Their history is peppered with name familiar even to non-Americans, like Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio. The Yankees had won 26 World Series in all, including the past three with little trouble, winning 12 games and losing only one in that time. Just this once, they also had more outside sympathy than usual, being a symbol of national pride after the events of 9/11.

No-one gave the Diamondbacks much of a chance before play started on Saturday. As mentioned, history plays a big part in baseball, and the Diamondbacks don’t have any to speak of. Most of the population in Phoenix is from elsewhere, and bring their loyalties with them – when teams like the Chicago Cubs came to town, it was hard to be sure who was the home side. Die-hards were largely limited to people like myself, who moved here after the franchise started, and we failed to sell out some earlier playoff games against St.Louis and Atlanta, which is like having tickets left over for an FA Cup semi-final.

But here we are, on Monday morning, and the Diamondbacks are two games up, having won 9-0 and 4-1. What the hell happened? Two words: Schilling and Johnson. They are the star pitchers for the D’backs – in cricketing terms, it’s a bit like when Lillee and Thomson played for Australia, with both at the top of their best seasons ever. Their styles are different: Curt Schilling uses pinpoint accuracy and movement to deceive the batter, while the very scary Randy Johnson – 6’10” tall – blazes it past them at 98 mph. Rounders, this ain’t.

Normally, even good batters only manage to hit the ball three times out of ten, one way or another, but in those first two games the Yankees batters – reigning world champions, remember – managed barely one out of ten. The bad news is, the effort involved is so extreme that most pitchers need four days of rest to recover before they can be used again, and the rest of the D’backs staff are nowhere near as effective. In addition, the next three games take place in New York. In the Bronx. In Yankee Stadium. Where the lovely fans have a reputation akin to Chelsea supporters with a hangover, and are renowned for slinging batteries at opposing players. How people like our 22-year old Korean pitcher, Kim, will cope, I dread to think.

But just at the moment, Arizona is the centre of the baseball universe, and with a 2-0 lead, there’s no better place for this recent convert to baseball to be. All is truly right with the world…