Welcome to the first installment of "Across the Pond," where I will spend this semester looking at sports, London style. It seems that many things become lost in translation as one goes from American English to British English. For example, cookies are called biscuits, Three Musketeers bars are actually what we call Milky Ways and, something we are all familiar with, unlike Americans the English drive on the "wrong" side of the road. Even sports, something people consider to be universal, are different from U.S. sports.
In the United States, the sport that involves an odd-shaped ball being passed laterally amongst teammates as they try to march down the field and cross an end line is football. However, in England, that actually translates into rugby.
Although rugby is played in the United States to an extent, it is not played with as much passion as when played in Europe. Europeans live for their rugby - similar to the way Americans live for their football.
The rules between the two sports seem similar enough. Like American football, a rugby team passes the ball back and forth as they try to gain field position and beat the defense. If you get the ball over the line, you score five points, similar to the way if you get the ball over the line in the United States, you score six points. If you kick the ball through the goal posts, it's worth three. So far, so good.
The only major difference between both sports is the padding, or severe lack of padding, in European rugby. In fact, nobody wears any pads. Men smash into each other, throwing caution to the wind and sustaining injuries in every game. Can you imagine the NFL playing without any pads? Yeah, it would be hard for Peyton Manning to "cut that meat" if he had a concussion every match.
Then there is the sport Brits and Europeans alike call cricket. No, not the cute little insect that asks you to wish upon a star, but the European equivalent of our U.S. pastime of baseball. The rules are pretty similar, but of course, like all things that are British, there have to be subtle differences to confuse us former colonists.
To start the play, a bowler, like our pitchers, hurls a ball toward a batsman. His goal is to hit a series of three wickets, wooden sticks similar to those found in croquet, that are placed behind the batter. If he knocks one of them down, the batter is out, like a strikeout. If the batter hits the wicket without knocking it down, and the fielders don't get the ball, he gets to run between two bases as much as he wants until a fielder tags him, or throws a ball at a wicket. Every lap the batter makes is a run.
Here is the best part of cricket, and one of the biggest differences from U.S. baseball: The batter gets to keep hitting until the other team tags him out. Imagine if that could happen in baseball. Think of how many runs Barry Bonds could hit if he could just keep running forever... Not that Bonds could ever keep running forever.
Finally, there is football, or as we Americans like to call it, soccer. Both have the same exact rules, except for some strange reason, two completely different names.
Football in England is a national obsession on the same scale as baseball is a national obsession for Americans. Fans pile into pubs to watch their teams play on television, yelling and screaming at the players in much the same way that people in sports bars at home curse and chew out players on the diamond. The best thing about English football is that everyone plays it, unlike here in the States where the only acceptable time for you to play is if you are either a pro or under the age of 12.
That's all the news and notes I have so far on my English excursion. I'll continue to keep you posted on all of the odd sporting events that take place in London. Until next time chap, cheerio!
