Cuban Baseball and the GAA
Driving home last night with my head full of insomniacal mush that mostly kept driving at 'Why, Why, Why, Why, Why, Why do my window wipers always need replacing when it rains?', Newstalk 106FM, which broadcasts in the greater Dublin area, ran a piece about....
The World Series of Baseball.
And in particular, The Chicago Whitesox. From the Cuban perspective. They had a Cuban sports reporter on, who's name I didn't catch, (I think his first name began with an 'E'!), explaining that because of the communist regime, that there is a news blackout on the world series in Cuba because the Sox have two cuban players who are doing really well!
Well fuck me. Y'see, this is completely contradictory to the Irish mentality. When we have someone who does well in Sport, and when I say say sport what I am really saying is "Sport, and anything that could be stretched definition wise to include Sport in the same sentence" like 'Snooker' for example, and is remotely Irish (qualification under this rule can be stretched as far as having a liking for Irish Coffee's) it's on every newspaper, TV show, Radio show, for at least a month. Because we are normally crap at sports. We're not too bad at the Arts, but we suck big time at sports.
But the Cubans, they don't want the populace knowing that their boys are doing well in the pro's. Because, they don't agree with professional Sport, it's amateur only in Cuba, and that's the way it's going to stay.
Now we can identify with this regime. We have our own Cuban Dictatorship over here. Only we call it the GAA. The Gaelic Athletic Association. GAA is responsible for Gaelic Football and Hurling. Our National Sports. A Sport which draws regular crowds of 80,000+ to provincial and Irish national finals. Tickets for these games are like hen's teeth. The GAA have sponsorship deals with Guinness and Bank of Ireland. They are raking it in. Millions and Millions of Euro every year. The players however get a paltry mileage expense and go back to their job in the Opticians office when Monday comes around.
One or two of these players has seen the light in recent years and headed off to Australia to try their hand at the Aussie version of Gaelic Football. It's roughly the same skillset involved, but it pays. Funny how we never hear how they get on over there.
If Fidel wants to know how to be a little bit more subtle and profitable whilst ripping off the players who provide the drama. Give the GAA a call, they've been cleaning up for well over a hundred years..
The World Series of Baseball.
And in particular, The Chicago Whitesox. From the Cuban perspective. They had a Cuban sports reporter on, who's name I didn't catch, (I think his first name began with an 'E'!), explaining that because of the communist regime, that there is a news blackout on the world series in Cuba because the Sox have two cuban players who are doing really well!
Well fuck me. Y'see, this is completely contradictory to the Irish mentality. When we have someone who does well in Sport, and when I say say sport what I am really saying is "Sport, and anything that could be stretched definition wise to include Sport in the same sentence" like 'Snooker' for example, and is remotely Irish (qualification under this rule can be stretched as far as having a liking for Irish Coffee's) it's on every newspaper, TV show, Radio show, for at least a month. Because we are normally crap at sports. We're not too bad at the Arts, but we suck big time at sports.
But the Cubans, they don't want the populace knowing that their boys are doing well in the pro's. Because, they don't agree with professional Sport, it's amateur only in Cuba, and that's the way it's going to stay.
Now we can identify with this regime. We have our own Cuban Dictatorship over here. Only we call it the GAA. The Gaelic Athletic Association. GAA is responsible for Gaelic Football and Hurling. Our National Sports. A Sport which draws regular crowds of 80,000+ to provincial and Irish national finals. Tickets for these games are like hen's teeth. The GAA have sponsorship deals with Guinness and Bank of Ireland. They are raking it in. Millions and Millions of Euro every year. The players however get a paltry mileage expense and go back to their job in the Opticians office when Monday comes around.
One or two of these players has seen the light in recent years and headed off to Australia to try their hand at the Aussie version of Gaelic Football. It's roughly the same skillset involved, but it pays. Funny how we never hear how they get on over there.
If Fidel wants to know how to be a little bit more subtle and profitable whilst ripping off the players who provide the drama. Give the GAA a call, they've been cleaning up for well over a hundred years..
posted by Derek Keogh | 2:45 PM
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