Few Yankee Fans Down Under
DMZ · September 30, 2005 at 3:50 am · Filed Under Mariners
I’ve seen three Yankee hats so far in Australia. As you can imagine, that’s amazingly cool to not constantly be needled by the brand of a hated rival franchise. The three:
1. Brisbane, guy carrying a pizza away from “NY Slice” pizza restaurant, suspected delivery man.
2. Port Douglas, German tourist.
3. Uluru (Ayer’s Rock), Spanish tourist.
The Yankee fans I have found so far are Japanese tourists who are Hideki Matsui fans. the guy I met yesterday noted with a big smile that Ichiro “is having a minus year” after my wife and I tried to argue the merits of Seattle’s finest.
Those three Yankee caps are the only MLB team caps I’ve seen since I got here.
No Doyle sightings yet.
Comments
15 Responses to “Few Yankee Fans Down Under”
Derek, while in AUS check out the wine country around Adelaide…or for a potential Doyle sighting, Melbourne which is a beautiful city with a lot of nice alfresco restaurants along the river.
No can do. My last week’s in Sydney and then I’m flying back. I wanted to book Melbourne/Adelaide but I couldn’t make it happen.
Don’t ever visit England then, they’re de riguer for a whole bunch of knob-heads: faux gangstas, rich white ‘rebelious’ adolescents, the track-suit and the shell-suit brigade, the kids living in Maidstone wearing Manchester United shirts.
I want to shake them and ask them who plays shortstop for the Yankees – but they’d have no idea what a shortstop is.
Watch out for the drop bears! Horrible creatures! ‘shiver’
Too right. Still, I did get a quiet “Go Mariners” from the token American in my lecture this week, which I happened to give in my Edgar jersey.
One of the most fun times I had involved the Yankees and Australians. It was 2001, and the M’s were rolling. I got tickets for the only homestand vs. the Yankees that year. I went with a bunch of friends and made the drive from the Tri-Cities. The entire game, we sat in front of these drunk Australians who were singing derrogatory songs about the Yankees. Now, we weren’t idiots, we knew that these were songs that were probably intended to spite all Americans, but due to the circumstances, I noticed several people buying them more beer.
Aussie Rules Football makes me want to thank my cable company for putting Fox Soccer Channel on the digital cable lineup. Man, is that stuff fun to watch. However, I was a bit disappointed to see that the refs had moved away from their white suits and hats. They’re dressed more in a more modern fashion now.
Come to think of it, that’s where the Seahawks should get a punter to replace Leo Araguz…
I would make my day to be in Australia and see a chap with “Snelling” painted across his back. I would shake that man’s hand.
Aussie rules is just bastardized rugby. Now rugby is a sport I’ll visit a pub at 6:00 am to watch.
Any wombat sightings? I love wombats; they’re my favourite marsupials.
“I would make my day to be in Australia and see a chap with “Snelling†painted across his back.”
Holy Outback, some guys are hard to please aren’t they? I’ll join the club: I’d just like to see Snelling healthy and in the line-up.
Evan – not so. Aussie rules is played with a rugby ball but that’s where any similarity ends.
It’s derived from, and closely related to Gaelic football. Australia and Ireland have played several international series of ‘compromise’ rules games over the last fifteen years.
The GAA has even adopted some of the Australian rules to make the Irish game flow a little more quickly – not that it was terribly slow in the first place.
From what a few Australian friends have told me, Aussie Rules is concentrated in Victoria, whereas both codes of Rugby are very popular throughout the country.
Back in college in the 80s our dorm had some kind of duct-taped sat dish for TV, and we discovered that one of the obscure upper channels would broadcast Australian Rules Football games. We were fascinated and completely confused, as it was often impossible to understand what the commentators were saying; what we saw was large guys screaming and running into each other seemingly at random, punting a ball around with their fists and feet, and the refs doing their little rigid arm-pointing thing occasionally. And then the score, which somehow consisted of two numbers for each team. We eventually hypothesized that the players were inventing rules on the spot and screaming them out, and the refs were doing their pointing thing to say “That’s a good rule!” Then the teams would get points for making up good rules, and then for scoring according to those rules.
What can I say? It was college, late at night, and we were drinking a lot.
I once arrived in Melbourne on the “footie” championship weekend. It was my first time in Melbourne, but not my first time in Aus, and I was rather dumbfounded by the atmosphere because all the Sydneysiders claimed Melbourners were cool and dull and dispassionate (by Aussie standards). On Monday everyone sobered up and Melbourne returned to normal.
You must be staying in the city and not venturing into the jungle. As they say in Australia, if a Doyle you seek in the jungle you must peek.
Two Red Sox hats today in Sydney. One on a very small Australian kid, one on a guy who might have been American but I couldn’t catch to ask.
As for the jungle: I’ve spent days in the rainforest and jungle so far. It’s amazingly cool, but getting into that’s a whole other topic.
Australian Rules Football and rugby both fascinate and confuse me. I’ve watched a lot of it, what with the Grand Finals and all, but they’re strange sports to try and figure out while watching on TV.
Derek, if you send me an email I could take a quick stab at the rules of both Aussie rules and rugby union if you like. Rugby league is not a strong point. Your probably better off trying to talk to friendly Australians in bars.