Boston, Baseball and the 2004 “World” Series

If I may, I’d like to recapture my first true immigrant encounter with America’s national pastime.

This was in Boston. In 2004.

(Safe to say your average Boston sports fan knows this year well.)

The World Series fascinated me when I first started living in America and it was in Boston that I really understood just what a big deal it was. Having grown up on am American pop culture diet, I knew the World Series was the ultimate baseball prize, the one all baseball players coveted, won by playing in a final of a grueling yearlong tournament. But I was still unsure of the scale of the tournament. Indeed, when I first heard about it as a child, I wondered if maybe it was baseball’s equivalent of the FIFA World Cup.

Thwarting my shameful ignorance, I learnt that the World Series was in fact played between two American cities. (I now know that one of my adopted home-towns up north – the very Canadian city of Toronto – plays in the MLB too, but I’ve never actually seen them win, so I doubt that the World Series is going to have Canadian representation any time soon.)

Now, I am not one to nitpick.

Scratch that, I’m actually very nitpicky.

So I feel compelled to point out that when one names a tournament The World Series often with emphasis on World, there ought to be an obligation to the lay public that it be little more than a domestic club tournament. And merely thinking of it as a global tournament because of the high quality of players, or arguing that baseball is played at the highest level in America, is simply not enough. In England, the club football league (as in soccer, not the oblong object thrown around by armor-plated ‘roid-monsters) is not called the World Cup. It’s called the English Premier League, because that is precisely what it is. There is a separate World Cup for teams representing countries and not clubs. The national table tennis championship in China is not called the World Championship. It’s called the Chinese Table Tennis Super League, because that is again precisely what it is. There is a separate World Championship for players representing their countries rather than clubs.

In India, almost everyone plays cricket. A lot of cricket. Indians play a whole load of other sports too, but they all pale in comparison to cricket. In fact India is the most dominant country in terms of revenue, influence, and clout in the world of cricket. The dominance is so vast that due to India and the larger South Asian subcontinent, cricket is the second most watched team sport in the world. Bet you didn’t think that was true did you? Look it up, I’m not kidding you. The reason I bring this to your attention is not some asinine attempt at sporting nationalism, something I consider to be crude and trite (not to mention the fact that India is monumentally pathetic at most other sports), but rather to point out that India is, I daresay, even more to cricket than the US is to baseball. In 2008 the Indian cricket board decided to organize an annual, multi-billion dollar club championship along the lines of the English Premier League, the NFL, and the NBA. Yet, the club championship in India does not have a moniker serving itself up as an international tournament, no matter how fervently Indian cricket officials might want it to. Mired as they might be in corruption and delusion, it just wouldn’t fool anyone. The tournament is called the Indian Premier League, again because that’s what it is, a domestic tournament in a country with the highest pedigree players in that sport, played between city-based clubs, who have the money to bring in high quality foreign players onto their roster.

I can actually understand, albeit only notionally, if the Super Bowl was called the World Bowl or something (which, granted, sounds stupid when it rolls of the tongue), considering the US and the world are pretty much the same in the sport. The NFL could lay claim with some degree of legitimacy to being a world championship since no one else on earth plays American Football.

(Except Canada of course. Because Canada seems to do everything America does, except in slightly more unassuming and modest ways. For gridiron football, the Canadian equivalent is the remarkably proletarian Canadian Football League, with most CFL players working other jobs to make ends meet.)

And there’s no shortage of sports like that with potential “world” championships that could be organized by creative entrepreneurs in their respective countries – the Buzkashi World Cup held every four years in Afghanistan; the World Oil Wrestling Grand Prix held annually in Turkey; the International Haggis Hurling Championships held biannually in Scotland; or the Naked Rugby World Cup held biweekly in New Zealand. (Please note, any of these could well be a thing. I haven’t done my research. And if they’re not a thing, then they should be a thing, and if any of them do ever end up becoming a thing – you’re welcome, future sports fans.)

But with baseball? Isn’t it played in, like, pretty much every Central and South American country? And Japan? And Australia or something? The World Series between two US clubs is a bit of a stretch in my humble opinion.

Nevertheless, it was something I would experience with much joy.

I was just starting to find my feet in Boston when there was a buzz around town that “it could be Boston’s year.” Being a sports buff, I was intrigued. When I started following the games, the American League Championship Series, that I discovered was seven games played between the top two teams of that league, was taking place. To the non-American reader, you might think this to be the national championships of baseball, but you might be surprised to learn (as I was) that there is also the National League Championship Series. I learnt that these two championships are essentially two halves of Major League Baseball. The winners of these two championships then compete in the World Series. (Again, do you see the contradictions here? Whatever…)

Now, I don’t know what it takes to be considered a part of any city you live in. I didn’t know what it was that made me a Bostonian for instance. I do know this – in American cities, you can artificially assimilate, albeit temporarily, by claiming allegiance to the local sports team. And if that sports team happens to have a dream run to championship glory, even better. Come to think of it, the success of the sports team might be pretty crucial here. I doubt immigrants have been able to artificially assimilate by latching on to losing sports teams. Indeed, the trauma of sporting failure might just translate to even more xenophobia.

This artificial assimilation happened to me purely by providence rather than design. I essentially stumbled upon what was quite possibly the most sports-orgasm-inducing, shrieking-with-drunken-merrymaking, oh-I’m-so-proud-of-my-team-that-I-think-I’m-going-to-cry-and-french-kiss-my-pet moment in Boston’s history. And I owe it all to the Boston Red Sox, which is one of the more self-descriptive monikers for a team anywhere in the world.

I started watching from the fourth game onwards of the American League Championship Series. It was the year 2004. The Red Sox fan will know what is about to come. The Red Sox fan will understand the magnitude of this moment. The Red Sox fan probably masturbates to reruns of this game. The Red Sox fan remembers 2004 with a warmth and fuzziness that even their marriage or the birth of their first child wouldn’t hold a candle to. The Red Sox fan can tell you exactly where they were for this game.

The Sox (cos, you know, that’s what you called them I learnt) had lost their first three games to the dreaded New York Yankees. And that third game, they didn’t just lose, they were hammered 19-8. I saw the score line in the Metro while riding the subway to work the next morning and wondered what kinds of skewed match-ups in other sports could have resulted in such a mauling. USA vs. India in basketball? Rafael Nadal vs. my dad in tennis? Three raging bulls vs. me dressed ever-so-flamboyantly as a matador? I remember reading articles in the Boston Globe lamenting the state of affairs with the Sox, how demoralizing it was, how they would need to go through another year without a World Series title (the last one coming in 19 bloody 18 – I mean 1918 was a time when typhoid could well have been considered the national pastime).

The writing was on the wall. Nay, it wasn’t just on the wall; it had been sand-blasted into it with ruthless efficiency. The Fat Lady was jiggling her adipose-laden jowls, clearing her magnificently taught vocal chords, setting her Viking helmet in place with pudgy fingers, and was all but ready to burst out in song. Only the heartiest of souls would have denied it. The Sox were going to lose ignominiously in the league championships, while the Yankees would go on to yet another World Series and probably win that as well. Yankees fans were probably already figuring out ways to fake illnesses and kill off ageing relatives to play hooky from work so they could see their irritatingly great franchise in action for the ultimate prize in baseball.

And it almost came to that in the fourth game. I was watching the game in my apartment in Jamaica Plains, primarily because I had nothing better to do. The Yankees were leading the Sox 4-3 in the bottom of the ninth inning. The Sox were down to their final three outs. I told myself that I didn’t really care what happened, but sporting tension has a way of drawing you in. I decided to support the Sox in my head, just to make the game more interesting for me.

And boy did it get interesting.

There is a name in baseball that I will always remember. In fact, when I think of baseball, his is the first name that pops into my head. I don’t believe he was ever a big star. In fact, he was probably one of those players in baseball spending very little time under the limelight hogged by major stars. His name is Dave Roberts, and he gave me my most exciting moment in American sports-viewing.

When thinking about this game, I have to look up articles on it to remember what others did and their names, but I never have to do anything to remember what Dave Roberts did. That guy could run!

This batter called Kevin Millar (had to look it up) was walked off by the Yankees pitcher (don’t really care who) and the iconic Dave Roberts was called in as a pinch runner for Millar. This was the moment.

Now, I didn’t know shit about baseball. It was the first game I had ever watched with real interest. I was figuring out the rules on the fly as I watched it. But I had played enough competitive sports, to know this was a make-or-break moment. Why the hell did they bring in this apparent non-star nobody to replace a full-fledged batter at a time when the Sox absolutely had to score to stay in the freaking championship? Roberts was to soon allay any doubts I had. After getting checked three times by the Yankees pitcher (still don’t care what his name is), Roberts stole a brilliant second when the pitch was ultimately thrown to the new batter, Bill Mueller (again, had to look it up). Scurrying like an Olympic sprinter whose muscular glutes were very recently lit on fire, Roberts got the Fenway Park faithful roaring with what I imagine was the faintest of hopes residing in their long-suffering hearts.

And he didn’t disappoint. The Yankees pitcher (fuck him) was hit for a single by Mueller, and Roberts ran home, tying the game and forcing an extra inning.

That moment changed everything and it went into extra innings. At the bottom of the twelfth, this gargantuan Dominican, David Ortiz, hit a monstrous two-run homer to send the series into Game Five. Damn the wall and the supposed writing on it. Go home Fat Lady. The Sox were going to keep on fighting thanks to Dave “Glutes on Fire” Roberts.

That moment also did something else for me. I decided to support the Sox from then on because it added a touch of excitement to watching the rest of the championship. I bought a Red Sox hat and wore it in a show of city-pride. As I got into it, I soon realized that the biggest stars of the Sox were not from Boston. In fact, three of their biggest stars weren’t even from the States. I’d already mentioned this mound of muscle, David “Big Pappi” Ortiz, and it turned out there were two other magnificent Dominicans – batter extraordinaire Manny Ramirez and princely pitcher Pedro Martinez. It made me actually feel ok about this shameless show of city-pride I was subconsciously putting on for the sake of blending in. It was almost like supporting a baseball team from the local Pan-American cultural attaché of the UN.

So the Red Sox hat stayed on almost permanently for the rest of the baseball season.

What a transformation it did for my own quality of life too. Talk about artificial assimilation. People looked at me and nodded, smiled, gave a little fist bump. Folks would cheerily shout a “Yeah…Go Sox!” or unwaveringly declare a “Keepin’ the faith bro!” It was nice. It was such a welcome change from the customary look of anger, curiosity, uneasiness, or some combination thereof that I had grown accustomed to. I realized then that one of the best ways one could artificially assimilate into any American city was to visibly showcase your support for the local team by wearing a hat or jersey. It needed to be noticeable though, not something hidden like an ass-tattoo, but a prominent part of one’s attire. It didn’t matter whether you cared about the team or even enjoyed the damn sport. Immigrants suffering from assimilation anxiety – take note of this survival strategy. It works like magic. Better than any amount of hard work or claims to human rights.

Make no mistake however – I got into it.

Sure, blending in and feeling like I could be a part of the city played a huge role. But it was also infectious. It must have been the athlete in me; perhaps an attempt at recreating the times my dad and I would watch cricket in India and lose ourselves in the game. I had an innate love for sporting endeavors that was nurtured in me from a very young age. The idea of supporting a team, however parochial and contrived, added to the excitement of sport.

And the Sox didn’t disappoint. They went on what can only be described as a fairy tale run. They won the next three games against the Yankees; the final one in the evil lair of Yankee Stadium itself. They became the first team in MLB history to win a seven-game series after losing their first three games. Hollywood couldn’t have scripted such an underdog, come-from-behind story if it tried. (While the Yankees are the richest MLB team, the Sox happen to languish all the way down in second place.)

But there was still the small matter of, ahem, The World Series.

The Sox were to meet the team from St. Louis, the Cardinals, with mascots in the form of mean-spirited little birds, frowns, gnashing teeth and all.

It was almost anti-climactic.

Boston never once looked like losing. It was probably one of the most one-sided World Series in MLB history. They beat the Cardinals 4-0 and ended up winning it for the first time in eighty-six years, apparently also smashing a curse of sorts which released the floodgates of cheap beer and riot police.

Talk about artificial assimilation again. I had been warned by my workmates to leave early during Game Four, which Boston were expected to win rather easily – I mean, c’mon, hadn’t anyone heard of kismet? But I didn’t heed their warning. I followed the game via live-streaming in my office and then, when Boston was looking like winning for sure, left to take the subway home. There was a little voice inside my head that told me to be a part of the city when the Sox won.

And it happened on the subway ride home. Somewhere along the way, a large, cheery black man who was following the last minutes of the game on his handheld radio got up in the middle of the ride and announced with much fanfare, “Ladies and Gentlemen! It is my privilege to let you all know that the Boston Red Sox have just won the World Series!”

The entire subway coach erupted. People jumped and shouted for joy, hugging each other. I could see older men with tears in their eyes.

The same chap who announced the joyous moment, clutched me in a tight hug, and screamed, “Show me some love brother! Show me some love!”

He was hugging me! The man was taking me in his arms out of pure communal sporting joy. For a brief moment, I didn’t have the label of the immigrant and didn’t have to play the role. For a brief moment, I was as Bostonian as he was.

I was to partake in the celebration on the streets too, in ways that caught me by surprise. As I walked home from the subway stop that night, I drank in the bucolic atmosphere. Every street corner and every bar had people partying inside and out with unmitigated joy. As I got closer to my apartment, four large, young white men pulled me into their drunken revelry. But this time there was no hostility or anger, instead they thanked me profusely, slurs and all, for the contributions of my people.

I was thrilled that someone from India had contributed to this historic victory.

“Really?” I asked in joy, as they twirled me around in a circle. “Who?”

“You know!” shouted one, drunkenly waving a rather large foam finger. “Manny, Pedro, and “Big Pappi” bro!!! They’re the bomb!”

Not wishing to spoil this moment of reflected glory I had just received, I went with it.

I pumped my fist in the air, and nodded happily.

“Viva La Raza!” I shouted.

“Hell yeah, hombre!” one screamed back in inebriated delight.

Ok, please don’t judge me. I was thrilled that they confused me for a Latino. Being from India, I was always jealous of the oomph that came with the stereotypes of my Latino brothers, something that the stereotype of a software engineer, doctor, or convenience store owner could never emulate. The Indian male stereotypes in America just didn’t have the kind of sexiness that the Latino male stereotypes did. The Guevaresque revolutionary, the macho soccer player, the sultry acoustic guitarist and now, the kick-ass baseball player. I was happy to bask in reflected glory with my brown skin, which I conveniently rationalized as connecting me with my Latino brethren.

After a couple of sweaty bear hugs, I left with a soft glow on my face. The Red Sox had given me the briefest of moments where I could consider myself a part of the city in a rather enjoyable way. It was done via a combination of parochial sports nationalism, commercialized notions of city-identity, and the utilization of team paraphernalia as a temporary tool to prevent marginalization. But it was nice to be a part of popular merrymaking and made for a cool experience.

Along the fringes of the non-profit industrial complex…

My first full-time job in the States was right after grad school, way back in May 2004. It moved my ass from Baltimore to Boston, the first steps to an ongoing, increasingly cynical, career along the fringes of the non-profit industrial complex.

It was with a gender justice organization in Boston called the Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence, Atask for short. I was hired to be their outreach coordinator.

I was the only dude in the organization. More often than not, my gender made me stand out in richly complimentary ways that I didn’t deserve in the slightest. On multiple occasions, in workshops and presentations that I conducted, I would be complimented on being a man working in an organization whose mandate was to prevent gender-based violence.

I was also given a get-out-of-jail-free card for my own complicity in the structures of patriarchy and misogyny, doing precious little to counter it. Rather, I wallowed in them. It fed my ego no end.

Regardless of any retroactive wokeness, one thing became crystal clear to me for the rest of my life – I worked best when I was around a crowd where men were in a minority. I felt more at ease working with women than I did with men. Probably the reason why I’ve continued to navigate a career along the fringes of the non-profit industrial complex, because for all its internalization of capitalist work culture, at lease in the non-profit sector there are more women than men. The constant one-upmanship that male-dominated groups often degenerated into was something I could do without. It further made me think about how the paltry few male friends I had in my life were those who avoided that kind of macho idiocy.

All in all, it was a good job and for the three years that I did it, I certainly gained a ton of experience and learnt a lot. I was probably alienated as fuck as a newcomer to Boston, but I genuinely liked my job, and equally importantly, liked telling others about my job.

This didn’t mean I avoided some very sobering experiences.

I soon learnt about a certain norm in many non-profit organizations that sought to work on issues within a racialized community. Namely, the utilization of every horrible community stereotype to garner funding from larger foundations. In other words, getting well-off white folk to think they were the saviors of that community. This internalized racism seeped into every workshop, presentation, outreach event, poster, brochure, and fundraising event meant for the broader public.

Now, there certainly were more progressive organizations who didn’t do this, even actively fought it. But Atask was not one of them, at least not while I was there. It was one of the really unpleasant parts of the work, and we worked on issues of gender-based violence for crying out loud.

I saw posters of exoticized, weak Asian women in submissive postures, head down in defeat with captions that read:

“Her husband abused her, her culture entrapped her. She needs your help.”

I endured scores and scores of white folk in educational workshops and outreach events asking questions reeking of dog whistle racism

I put up with carte-blanch assumptions that violence within a minority community was a cultural norm, while violence within white communities was a deviance from theirs.

Atask sometimes had no choice (apparently) but to promote this crap themselves, actively propagating racist stereotypes of the very communities they served, in order to garner funding.

One time, at one of our annual fundraisers, I loudly voiced my displeasure at some of the racist imagery being used and the fact that we had to cater to such ridiculous stereotypes in order to garner funding.

At this, a board member (who was Asian herself) remarked with a snarky huff, “You don’t seem to show a lot of love, Sri, for those who are paying your salary.”

 I was, like, dang…

I didn’t know I had to be grateful that our organization was forced to resort to racist stereotypes in order for me to get paid a fair wage for my work, you know, the princely salary of thirty-two grand a year.

What was I supposed to do?

Bow down every time I saw one of the self-anointed saviors and take three steps back?

Invoke thanks via silent, kneeling prayer as they pass?

Hail benevolent board member, full of green. Thank you so much for deigning to lend your time, dress in formal costume, and participate in this garish fundraiser. The plebian hors d’oeuvres alone must take a monumentally courageous effort for you to sample. The plaudits you receive and the badge of charity you may now claim on your CV as a savior of the weak and under-funded is but a paltry gesture of our appreciation for this majestic exercise in lending your well-moisturized hand to us lesser souls. We give thanks and reverence to thee, oh saintly, well coiffed one.

Felt like that at times.

Navigating the fringes of the non-profit industrial complex is nothing if not a crash course in class inequality.

Great Lakes transnational alliances.

Climate change is going to bring about a substantial number of future political possibilities and alliances, cutting across power lines vertically and horizontally. The current nationalist, right-wing, neo-fascist upsurge globally will give way, one way or the other, to a reorganization of global nation-states – most likely with progressive, earth-friendly governments increasingly coming to power in the wake of climate shocks and the crumbling of borders.

We are likely heading into increasingly frequent periods of economic turmoil, even in the relatively privileged western world. I believe we are all going to need to learn how to build organic, nurturing communities if we are to stand a chance of surviving and even thriving in the challenges the may come.

To that end however, basics like food, water, shelter, and safety will be taken less for granted than many of us in the western world probably do currently. Geography will begin to matter more than just the route to the grocery store or local burger joint.

Fresh water will matter more than probably anything else on earth. The Great Lakes are the largest grouping of freshwater lakes on earth by area and the second largest by volume. There is little doubt in my mind that they will hold increasing regional, and perhaps even, continental significance as the fallout of climate change pans out globally. North America is after all still a new world formation of nation-states, and thus significantly less dense, population wise, than old world formations. (In other words, North America had best be prepared for many, many generations of migration and settlement through its continental shores, with significant demographic changes for centuries.)

The US states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York as well as the Canadian behemoth province of Ontario, as of now (and perhaps for some generations to come) have various levels of state and governmental jurisdiction over the Great Lakes.

As the contours of nationhood and community get blurred with mass migration, there is every chance that a more localized Great Lakes alliance develops to establish control and dominion over this vital natural gem. This is in turn likely to keep the cities and towns of the Great Lakes regions with desirable economic choices, safety nets, and living standards, compared to the global or even North American median. There is every likelihood that the Great Lakes regions are going to see increasing numbers of migrants and refugees from all over the world for generations to come.

All in all, a giant, ever-changing, soup of social, economic, and political conditions.

One way or the other, there are going be a variety of ever-strengthening and ever-evolving transnational alliances across sectors and divisions. Geographic contiguity and the communities we build across it will continue to be of vital importance as we face the coming climate storms.

From Bangalore to Minneapolis – I love my town

Minneapolis is my town.

Bangalore is my home town.

Toronto is my adopted town.

Chennai is my birth town.

All towns I love. Some bigger than others. Some facing more social and economic crises than others. But all towns that have captured parts of my heart. There are others that have also done so, some that I’ve lived in, some that I was just journeying through…

Ahmedabad.

Baltimore and Boston.

Bethlehem and Ramallah.

Delhi and Srinagar.

I believe in the urban collectivization of humanity for numerous reasons. They tend to be the places where progressive and counter-culture thinking can find root or at least occasional safe spaces. But I’m aware that they are also places that can suffer great violence and turmoil when shit hits the fan.

We need to protect our towns. We’re going to have to come together to weather the coming climate shocks anyway, whether we like it or not.

As capitalism and nationalism face their final stands before their ultimate demise (this cycle at least)…it is in our towns – our nearest agglomerated, contiguous, geographic communities where new, nurturing economic systems can replace more predatory forms.

I love my town.