Sunday, October 28, 2012

An American Sports Fan Abroad

Last night was daylight savings time here in Spain. At 3 am, the clocks turned back to 2am. I was awake to see it. Why you ask?

Because my Giants are in the World Series. I'm a huge baseball fan and even though the game started at 2am, the time changed, and the game finished at 4:30am my time. It was worth staying up for the entire three and a half hour game. The Giants now have a 3 games to none series lead over the Tigers.   One more win and there will be another parade to City Hall.

The last time the Giants were in the World Series, I wasn't in town either. In fact, I'm pretty sure I was cramming for exams. I did catch the final game of that World Series. I dragged my friends to the sports bar on campus and made them sit there with me for three hours. There are a lot of other Giants fans on campus so when the team won, the place erupted with joy.

From what I hear, SF has Orange Fever again. We never really stopped having it after their 2010 triumph. It's always been a baseball town but even more so with the team's first World Series victory since coming from NY in 1958. You see Giants clothing year round, and orange is always a popular color. The city right now seems to be all abuzz with the Giants exciting postseason so far. Coming back from enormous deficits in both the NLDS and NLCS series and now up 3-0 in a best of seven World Series makes Giants baseball pretty exciting right now.

I just wish I were there in my hometown, rocking my own orange and black and chatting with strangers about how great our starting pitching has been, how effective Tim Lincecum has been out of the bullpen or what defensive wizardry our guys seem to pull off every night.

But see that's the funny thing: there are a surprising number of Bay Area people here in this part of Spain. I have a Giants backpack and it has caused me to meet so many people from around SF. I even met a white haired gentleman who went to the same high school in SF that I did. And of course, everyone here also just wants to talk about the game.

It may not be as crazy as it is back home, but it's sure nice to have that Bay Area feel here.

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