Not Missing the Mets
"If all the year were playing holidays; To sport would be as tedious as to work."
William Shakespeare from 'The First Part of King Henry the IV'

One of the questions people invariably get around to asking me around here, perhaps one of the first in fact, is always something cleverly obstrusive along the lines of "what made you come here from New York?, " and they always ask this question with a disbelieving lilt in their voice given that a more polar opposite location couldn't be found between Blackwell, Warwickshire and Manhattan. And it probably couldn't. This is a village of about 10 families. The nearest pub is almost two miles away and of course, perhaps thankfully, there are no Mets, no Jets and no Knicks anywhere to be found.

There aren't any of America's sports scene to be found hereabouts. Sure, you can go 8 miles up the road to Stratford-Upon-Avon, Shakespeare's birth and deathplace, to buy an international copy of the USA Today and get your fix, (a few precious pages but not its own section in the international version) but until I was reconnected with the internet this week past, I supped on a meager fare of two-day-old baseball scores published in The Independant and tried to calculate the pennant race in my mind from memory of the standings every day.

You might even venture to believe that there is something romantic in the notion of living on the barest of sports essentials. After all, for any devotee of sports, there is a junkie-like craving for a fix and while in America, that craving can be sated at any hour of the day from a multitude of sources, living a few weeks in the wild so to speak, with no internet access and no cable television, you find other means of exhausting your sports cravings. I've had a few practices with the third division's rugby club in nearby Shipston-on-Stour and was able to catch a few football matches in the local pubs, thrillers like England versus Lichtenstein.

But even though the football coverage is exhaustive, so much so it seems there is barely time to squeeze in more, once the internet was up and running in this little cottage, I was able to gain access once again to all my favorite papers online, revisited my favorite columnists and finally started feeling the old blood circulating once again.

Last night, after connecting with the MLB post season audio package, I was able to listen to the home Giants radio broadcast of their victory over the Marlins and took in the full Cubs victory over the Braves on WGN that didn't begin here until after one in the morning.

So while the coverage is becoming invasive once again, there is still the vague sense of a lack depth, a mild degree of failed dimension, trying to feel the full brunt of such coverage, to wallow and bathe in it, is virtually impossible. If I told an inquisitive neighbor that my motivation for leaving Manhattan for Warwickshire was escaping the mediocrity of the Mets, they wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about.

On the other hand, few in Manhattan, save for those die-hards at Nevada Smith's where we'd spent many a Saturday morning getting blind on ales at 8 am watching the Premier League matches, are going to get very worked up about the big match this Saturday afternoon between still-undefeated Birmingham City and Manchester United, even if Man U's current keeper, the American Tim Howard, was the keeper for the NY/NJ Metro Stars only this summer.

So there are varying degrees of privation when it comes to sports here. On the one hand, there are pleasures like two Sundays ago with the missus, sitting in a 400 year old pub in Evesham watching the most controversial match of the season that ended with the Man U striker from Holland, Ruud van Nistelrooy, missing a certain penalty kick for victory and then getting nearly mauled by a group of angry Arsenal opponents as the game was ending in what was roundly called the most disgusting display in the last 40 years of football. (A wee bit of an exaggeration in my mind but as far as getting the missus excited about football for an afternoon, it worked wonders.)

The NFL season is flying by and I can barely catch up to figure out what is happening. Of course, the Jets are a hapless lot, as anyone would have guessed after they lost half the core of their young stars to the Redskins and then compounded the problem by having their star quarterback lost for most of the season. That was looming up in the rearview mirror very quickly indeed, the sight of an already failed Vinny Testaverde at the wheel.

Is it cruel irony that the -ETS teams are so miserable? The Mets having mercifully concluded yet another in a brief string of disappointing seasons, will be rebuilding yet again, having tossed their farm system this season at the opposition and found most of them, with the exception of Reyes, Wigginton, Seo and Jason Phillips, wanting. While it was wonderful to finally see them rid themselves of Armandogeddon, shouldn't the selfish and rapidly-aging Piazza be the next to follow while something is still to be had for such a well-known commodity? And Hula Howe was never an answer to begin with, merely a sloppy second, a calming salve after being rebuked by the Mariners for the tireless Lou Piniella. Well, the Mariners got their comeuppance indeed, with the arrival of Benitez, but there should still be a new man at the helm in Shea next season if the rebuilding process is to be taken seriously. Wally Backman should be the first one mentioned if the White Sox don't grab him first.

It should be noted that the last fall I spent outside of America for a World Series was in 2000, which resulted in the first Subway Series in 44 years. It's been my sneaking suspicion that this year's absence might be enough to provoke a Cubs-Red Sox Fall Classic that would end at least one city's misery. While that might be a nice suggestion and the timing, given this being the 100th World Series played, would be flawless, there's something like the Giants and the Twins in the air that seems, even here from England, like an irresistible force.