What on Perth?!?!

Back in Australia for almost six weeks now, it’s been a fun and busy return to oz. So far my recreational activities have included: lawn bowling, Sunday sesh at Little Creature Brewery, a wine tour up the swan river and a .500 batting average after two games of the club baseball season.

In the office, we’ve made a lot of strides in developing membership (season ticket) and group prices and come up with a lot of interesting marketing ideas (not the least of which was entering and winning the “Grand Mascot Race” put on by a local radio station at the halftime of a sold out charity footie game http://www.mix.com.au/shows/thebigcouch/highlights/grand-mascot-race-2009 ).

This past week was our first exhibition series where we played a Thursday regional game in the small mining town of Kalgoorlie (per usual ‘stralian vernacular you don’t pronounce the “r”), home of the world’s largest open gold mine…and famous for having the most pubs per capita in the world. Our task was to arrive after the hour flight into the outback and build a field from scratch on a footie oval (which also had two cement cricket pitches where the outfield would be). I had never built a mound before, but after building three in one day (2 bullpens), I think I’ve reached intermediate grounds crew status. Marking the lines proved a little more difficult, I tried to bust out the Pythagorean Theorem to figure out exactly where to place the bases…they were close enough but the distance between first and third was about a foot and a half too short, but that was the least of our troubles on the poorly lit and terribly sodded field…all in all it was a good trip to Kalgoorlie.

We’re now getting ready for our second exhibition series which is against a USA “all-star” team comprised of all of the US imports that are usually former college and pro players who are paid nominal sums to come over and play for the local clubs. It should draw well and will be our best opportunity to get the word out about the new Australian Baseball League to the club members who will come out to watch their imports play against the two-time defending champ HEAT team (I was scolded for not writing Perth Heat in all CAPS).I absolutely love where I am living in the suburb of Claremont (officially the most expensive median real estate prices in Australia). I’m a block and a half from the train station which takes me 15 minutes to the city and 15 minutes the other way to the posh port town of Fremantle. I’m also a short run (maybe 2 miles) to the beach at which point if I turn south I’m in the popular beach town of Cottlesloe, and north takes me to the nudist beach of Swanbourne (I’ve only made that mistake once!).

Claxton Finals

I probably did more work in my final week here in Perth than the majority of the 10 weeks combined. Most of it wasn’t too fruitful but we added some decent game entertainment including getting a local cheerleading squad to use slingshots to launch softee balls into the crowd (Travis and I constructed them out of funnels and duraband exercise chords because Australians don’t seem to know what a slingshot is). I also got a group of Harley Owners to bring out about 10 bikes which they paraded around the field and brought in the two mascots. Finally, in my best move of the week, I talked a local dance instructor into coming out and doing a few routines in a tertiary mascot costume which became known as Dancing Veggieman…he is a somewhat well known character who encourages kids to eat fruits and vegetables while ironically being constructed out of fruits and vegetables. He did a good job of getting the crowd involved and although I don’t think most of the fans knew what to think, they seemed to get a good chuckle out of it.

The crowds were impressive for the first time in all of my travels with Friday night’s crowd of about 3,000 pushing the stadium to the limit filling the grassy burms on each side and keeping the concession stands and bar slammed all night. It was an excellent problem to have and actually made baseball in Australia seem somewhat feasible, but then again it was the grand final which they had four weeks to promote so I don’t know if 3,000 people is worthy of throwing a party about. New South Wales took game 1 in somewhat of a surprise and were poised to take game 2 in a 4-4 game in the bottom of the eighth when a single to left had the runner from second racing towards home with 2 outs. The runner beat the throw home but former California League umpire (and a cocky one at that), Travis Hatch, called the runner out claiming the catcher had blocked the plate…the catcher did a good job of blocking the plate but I still don’t see how he made that call given that he beat the throw by a step…of course the next inning Nick Kimpton, the Claxton Hitter of the Year who batted .500 (32-64) on the series, belted a homer to win if for WA…I was kind of looking forward to a Sunday off in Perth, but no such luck.

Thursday Night I went to a comedy competition which will eventually select the best amateur comedian from Western Australia to head to the International Festival in Melbourne. There were some decent acts but watching people squirm on stage was almost as entertaining. After the show I met up with Martha Stoumen who lived in our apartment building at UCLA and I had randomly discovered a week earlier t that she just got to Perth to spend six months making wine near Margaret River. We went to the Hula Bar in the CBD and I was surprised to see the bar shutdown at about midnight. Perth has old school business hours, everything closes by 5 O’clock. I don’t really get how that works for anyone who works 9-5 to get things done after work but businesses are allowed to stay open until 9pm on Thursday nights…they are also in the final of three year trial of daylight saving time and apparently on their way to repealing it which makes no sense to me.

Game 3 of the final was well pitched by both sides with the WA leading 2-0 going into the top of the ninth with the only runs coming on an early two-run bomb by Chris House (Claxton Rookie of the Year). New South Wales put two on with two out and a double down the line tied the game. WA came back and won it in walk-off fashion after a lead-off double and the crowd rejoiced back-to-back Claxton Shield Championships …and with that I have become unemployed for the first time since graduating from UCLA…but a 10 week trip all around Australia was well worth it.

Super Bowl Monday

Sunday was a pretty monotonous day of travel leaving the Gold Coast at 2pm only to stop in Sydney …then made the five hour flight to Perth. Virgin Blue has a tv on every seat, but they didn’t have the network broadcast of the Nadal/Federer Aussie Open Final. Fortunately, Australians broadcast everything in tape delay so when I got to Perth gaining two hours, the match was still only in its third set (Nadal won in 5 so Sampras’ record is safe for now). I was staying the first night with Geoff Hooker the President of Baseball Western Australia. He had a docket of things lined up for me to do Monday morning, I politely interrupted him to say that Monday was actually a National Holiday where I come from and that I was hoping to watch the super bowl which started at 8am and he said that was fine and that he’d take me to the local casino to watch it.

The next morning, he had to get to his office but his wife dropped me at the casino to meet up with some of the American import players who get a small stipend and host families to come over here and play for the local clubs. They are mostly former minor leaguers who have been released and are either trying to make it back or just want to keep playing and get to travel to Australia. One of the guys who’s name escapes me was my age, graduated from Michigan and was actually leaving the next morning for a tryout at UCLA’s baseball field with the Cardinals and Tigers. Another guy, Marshall, has come over here to coach a youth team after spending last summer doing clinics for MLB in Great Britain. We were all trying to think of the last time that there were actually two consecutive decent Super Bowl games…unfortunately on the Australian feed we got Sterling Sharp and Ron Jaworski commentating and only regular Australian commercials.

Travis is another American, a former Twins farmhand, who works for Baseball WA and also helps run Fielder’s Choice, the baseball supply store owned by Geoff Hooker’s family. He has been showing me around a bit and telling me who is who. Their facility here in Perth is top notch (relatively) and they are quite proud of it and the program that they run. Another American Baseball WA employee is former Storm pitcher Steve Fish who was actually back in southern California a few weeks ago visiting The Diamond.

One thing that’s really weird here in WA is their tee-ball program is totally distinct from baseball/little league. Tee-ball tries to retain kids as long as possible claiming to be its own sport and having age groups all the way to under 13’s. I can’t even fathom 12 year old kids playing tee-ball, not to mention the fact that they think it’s a different sport rather than a different level of the sport reserved for 6 year-olds…bizarre.

Perth residents are somewhat proud to live in the “most isolated city in the world” but after a quick google search Honolulu technically is the furthest city in distance from another major city. Plus I’m not really sure why that’s worthy of bragging about.

Koalas, Basketball and Anti-Americanism

I spent the last week back on the Gold Coast staying again at Andy’s beach-side apartment in Surfer’s Paradise. It was a frustrating/boring week in the ABF offices…they sent the other two Americans that were out here back to the states because there wasn’t much left for the to do, not that there has been too much for us the entire trip as it’s hard to have much of an impact on a venue/event when you show up in a new town the week of the series and have to try to figure out where you are, who you need to talk to and then try and weed through all of the local politics. The only real reason I was allowed to stay is that a. I have a contract going through the tournament that I wouldn’t allow them to back out on and b. my game ops experience might be useful for the finals.

Thursday night I trekked it alone again to Surfer’s Paradise to see what kind of trouble I could stir up. I ended up hanging out with this guy and girl and went to a few of the different bars but I think without wanting to go to the real clubs it’s difficult to find too much. Friday night I went to melba’s (pronounced melbers because they like to add and delete “r’s” on a whim) it was alright but I headed to an Irish pub across the street later in the night and ended up dancing with these two girls for what seemed like 12 hours to a two-person cover band.

Saturday, I got the call that I’d be heading to Perth on Sunday so I hopped on a bus and went to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary where I saw my first live koalas, dingos, wombats and crocodiles and even got to pet a kangaroo…overall it was a pretty lame park and the Tasmanian Devil was in hiding so I didn’t even get to see compare it to the cartoon version. I remembered there was an NBL basketball game that night between the Gold Coast Blaze and the Sydney Spirit. Andy ended up scoring us two media passes and even though the Blaze are concluding a last place season, they won a high-scoring affair at 139-119 and guard James Harvey ended up scoring a franchise-record 42 points. The basketball was pretty sloppy (really just a bunch of missed layups and guys chucking up 3’s) and former Louisville Cardinal Luke Whitehead was unimpressive. The game presentation was something else though, they had really loud music blaring the whole time and the crowd of a couple thousand people were really into it. They have a courtside emcee who spends the whole game making sarcastic remarks about the other team and exhorting the crowd to make noise, which I think could get a little old but seemed to have the crowd of locals entertained (he would read advertisements while they were on fast-breaks and admonish the crowd behind the baskets for not forcing Sydney to miss free throws). All and all for a league that is failing I thought it was a good night out and really nice venue.

After the game, Andy took me on a lap of the Broad Beach scene which is a little higher end and then we headed back to Surfer’s for the “official Gold Coast Blaze” after party at the Q-Deck. The Q-deck is conveniently located atop the Q Tower which is the tallest residential building in the world at 322 meters tall. It was a pretty cool view at night and it is alleged that you can see all the way to Brisbane on a clear day (which is an hour’s drive so I kind of doubt it but it’s a nice story). We started talking to this birthday group who invited us to come out to Broad Beach with them, but we weren’t really to keen on following. I talked with a couple of them for a while and met probably the most anti-American person (or maybe just the rudest person) I’ve met so far in oz, in one of the girls who as I was saying how much fun I’ve had in Australia she was telling me, “don’t tell anyone in America because we don’t want any more of you guys coming down here”…she then tried to argue with me whether there were 50 states or 52, finally after questioning whether I could name them all and I insisted I could she said “well I bet most Americans are too stupid to know them anyway”. I told her that generalizing the personality/intellect of 300 million different people is about as stupid as arguing with me how many states there are in the union and left it at that. Anyway, we went to a few other places and yada, yada, yada we got home after sunrise (which is at like 4am because Queensland is retarded and doesn’t have daylight savings).

Australia Day

The semi-finals started as expected with Victoria beating New South Wales 7-1 (and with no one in attendance in dismal Altona). I was doing the upstairs PA for the weekend and the matchup wasn’t too bad I would say at least 75% of the guys playing either are or were signed to US professional contracts including Justin Huber (played most of last year with the Padres) and Brad Harman (got a world series ring after filling in for Jimmy Rollins for a couple weeks last year). The Vics had the home field advantage and were heavily favored but ended up not scoring over the last 22 innings getting shutout 9-0 on Saturday and 7-0 on Sunday so in two weeks in Perth the matchup will be NSW v. Western Australia for the Claxton Shield.

Saturday night I again headed to the CBD to catch a comedy show at Last Laugh Comedy Club. The lineup was a young Australian guy as the emcee, some brit named Terry North and an alleged Australian comedic legend George Smilovici who is also allegedly the only comedian to have a number one selling album in Australia, New Zealand and America (not really sure what their definition of number one selling is…but sure). The emcee was funny, had some jibes at America but also some good bits about backpacking around the US. The POM was a dud. Smilovici was a Romanian-Jew born in Cuba whose family immigrated to Sydney when he was 8 so he had an interesting background. His bit was “I’m Tough” so he wanted the crowd to say “how tough”… “I’m so tough, I don’t use MySpace I’ll use your space” and other random musings. Probably the funniest thing he said was in rambling about a bunch of popular culture people (most of which I had never heard of) he said W was just a retarded Forrest Gump. I still thought the other show was funnier…it was cheaper and more acts, but this was good enough.
I caught another early flight Monday morning (picked up at 5:30am) after doing a tour of a number of pubs on Brunswick St. Sunday night. January 26 is Australia Day which is supposed to be a day celebrating the nation’s birthday and also the day they name the “Australian of the Year”. This year the winner was Mick Dodson an Aboriginal Activist who gave voice to a movement to change the date of the Australian Day celebration because January 26 was the date that Europeans first landed in Sydney Harbor, which aboriginals view rationally as “Invasion Day”.

When I arrived on the Gold Coast and took a cab to Andy’s place his phone was turned off and there was no answer at his door. So I dumped my stuff in his garage and hung out at the beach for a while. I checked out the Surfer’s Paradise mall, bought some shoes and started talking to this Canadian guy who worked at one of the surf shops (I still can’t believe how many people ask me if I’m Canadian particularly since I don’t say “eh”, carry a hockey stick or eat round bacon). He told me about a surfing competition going on in Burleigh. When I finally got ahold of Andy we headed over that way and checked it out, it wasn’t all that great mainly just a bunch of punk teenagers wearing Australian flags as capes so we decided to head to Ben Foster’s place for a BBQ (the headline the next day was about a riot that broke out at Burleigh, apparently the second year in a row where unruly teens got out of hand…I think we left literally minutes before it all started).

At Ben’s house we drank Coronas, ate kebabs and played backyard cricket. This was my first chance to actually play cricket and backyard cricket is basically a game of pepper where you try to hit the ball on the ground (mainly so you don’t lose the tennis ball over the fence) and defend your stumps (usually a garbage can). You had to bowl before you could bat and I ended up accidentally taking the wicket on my second ball with a full toss (meaning I didn’t bounce it, the release point on the straight armed throw is a little awkward). Then it was my turn to bat and I actually stayed up for a little while as Andy tossed me spinners that I defended including a couple of 4’s although no one actually keeps score. We also listened to triple-J radio whose Australian Day tradition is to count down Australia’s most popular 100 songs of the year…Kings of Leon had like 5 songs on the list including the number one song “Sex on Fire”. I don’t know how popular that song is in America, but I haven’t gone to a pub yet without hearing it here. So that was my first Australian Day celebration.

Stralian Comedy

I found the Comic’s Lounge in North Melbourne and decided to check out their Thursday night show. I took the train into town a couple hours early and wandered to a few hapless bars before heading in to buy my ticket at around 7:30pm. The show didn’t start til 8:30 so I wasted some time at the bar and asked about international acts and if any Americans ever come through, a bystander remarked “no, cause Americans aren’t funny.” I wanted to ask why then the only thing on tv here is American sitcoms but there was no need for acrimony. The place seated about 450 and there were about 250 on a Thursday which I thought was pretty good.
The emcee was alright, a lot of trite jokes but sometimes clever…when he was about to introduce the first act he wanted the crowd to give a big American/Las Vegas over-the-top ovation so he asked if there were any Americans in the crowd, naturally I didn’t raise my hand but some poor sap in the front did (and he pretty much wore it the rest of the night), the emcee encouraged “so go ahead and be American…but not too American, don’t go bombing a small country or anything.” I thought that was kind of funny, but later all the American jokes started getting old (annoying and hackneyed).

The first act was this redneck (Australian Larry the Cable Guy) who made a joke about how crumpets take forever to cook and how fire suits should be made of crumpets and then he joked about how somebody would have to explain that to the American…and I agreed.

The next two acts were younger guys who were more my style, witty/sarcastic. I ended up talking to them during the intermission and Peter Sharkey started asking me which comedians I liked, I told him obviously Seinfeld but lately I’ve been watching a lot of Doug Stanhope and David Cross. He said he really likes Steven Wright and Mitch Hedberg which was funny cause I have both of those guys on my Ipod. He invited me to a free show that he does Monday nights in the CBD…Monday is Australia Day (celebrating the European settlement) so depending on my plans (there’s a beer festival near Fed Square) I hope to make it there for the 8:30pm show.

The closer was John Kats, he was pretty funny but nothing terribly noteworthy…I had to catch three different trains so I didn’t get home again until almost 12:30am. So my first comedy show in Australia was pretty good, and 5 acts for $15 bucks was quite a deal…I just wish I could be in Melbourne in April for the international comedy festival where there are supposed to be heaps of comedians at all sorts of venues all over the city for the whole month.

Grand Slam

After checking out one of the venues for the weekend (Waiverly Baseball Club has a lot of work to do to get the grounds in order…), I was still on two hours sleep but I had to check out the Australian Open. I wanted to get there at 5pm because after 5 ground passes were only $20 so I could check some secondary matches out and say that I was at a tennis grand slam event. As I made my way to the ticket booth, a Belgian guy stopped me and asked if I wanted to by a single ticket to the secondary stadium, Hisense Arena, which would allow me access to everything but the main venue Rod Laver Stadium (the night match there was a 16 year-old Aussie who had become the youngest ever to win an Aussie Open match, so not really what I wanted to see anyway) and in the secondary arena…wait for it…Roddick v. some Belgian slouch. Face value was $60 but he only wanted $30 since his friend had flaked on him so I was in.

When we got to our seats (right on the side in the 8th row) it was the second set between an Argentinian and a Taiwanese player. The Argentinian, who was much bigger and clearly favorite, had taken the first set. The second set went to a tiebreaker with the Argentinian taking that as well, so it looked like the route was on. It was really cool sitting so close and watching guys that good play tennis at the highest level, not boring at all (the thing I didn’t like was that if you got up to get a beer you had to wait two games until the swap ends to get back to your seat…all the more reason to double up). Lu started making a comeback winning the third and fourth set and the group of about 15 young Taiwanese fans sitting three rows behind me were loving it. There was a drunk Aussie fan wearing a green and gold sombrero on the other side that started joining in on their chants and had everyone laughing between points. Heading into the fifth set I went to get another beer and saw the Aussie changing sides to sit with his new asian friends. I talked to him as we waited to be let in and asked if he had any idea what he was chanting and he said “no, Im just jumping on the bandwagon.” I was obviously pulling for Lu and he ended up winning (I didn’t even realize until I asked the Belgian dude at the end that the Argentinian, David Nambolinian was a top 10 player and it ended up being the biggest upset and best match of the tournament so far). It was easily the best tennis match I’ve ever seen (and probably the coolest atmosphere of any sporting event I’ve been to except UCLA/usc Dec. 2, 2006). And Roddick was still to come.

Before that match started the Belgian guy left to join some of his countrymen who had painted themselves black, red and gold (and I don’t think he wanted to watch the match next to an American). I was surprised to see that Roddick was a crowd favorite (mainly amongst women 18-44) but he dropped the first set and frankly watching him live my opinion of him went down. He yelled at the towel boy after losing a point and had pretty big rabbit ears looking up at the chanting Belgians each time he won a point. His serve was impressive from up close topping out at 225km/hr (no clue how that translates to mph). I ended up chatting with most of the people sitting around me including an asian-aussie uni student who told me she was studying abroad at Cal Poly SLO for the spring quarter and a group of middle-aged aussie women who were in love with Roddick (it was hard to get used to sitting in the stands and only being able to speak between points).As the fourth set dragged on past 10pm, I started to get nervous about catching a train home because I wasn’t really looking to stay in Melbourne until 5:25am again. Luckily Andy knew I was pressed for time so he finished him off and moved to the third round. At the train station I sat at the wrong platform for 40 minutes, and ended up barely catching the last train out at 12:05am after asking at the info desk. I got home at about 1am and was up at 8:30 to check out the other venue for the weekend. Altona has probably the best stadium setup I’ve seen in Australia except it is poorly maintained it is so far out in an industrial suburb you must be a really hardcore baseball fan to want to show up on Friday (I don’t even really want to go)…so we’ll see how the semi-finals go out there. In conclusion, I am pretty sure I can never go to another tennis match because it's doubtful I could have as much fun.