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).