This week in … Cubs Baseball
Image courtesy of @jasonw
Every (ahem) week, I write my nephew letters about sports that he mostly doesn’t read. They centre on my support for the Patriots, Yankees Cubs, Knicks, and apparently Tottenham Hotspur Newcastle United – and his love of Chelsea, LeBron James, and prop bets.
Discovering a local Irish, but ten brisk minutes away from home, will seal my destruction in Berlin. Blarney’s is allegedly an Arsenal pub, which would make it fully intolerable were I not in the process of altering (once more, or once and for all) my club allegiance. I have been there enough times now – to behold the sorcery of the all-new Paris St. Germain, applaud Aston Villa reluctantly, and afford Tottenham Hotspur one last chance – that the proprietor knows to slide me a Guinness and a Walker’s crisps the moment I wander in. He’s a chatty German fellow, I’d wager no further along than his mid-60s, prone to bouncing from one fanbase to the next with frothing orders; regaling the English in particular on European nights, with sweet memories of having been a wanderer into pubs himself, in Glasgow, Birmingham, London of course, gay Paris. I think I heard him say he’s a Manchester United fan, the night those blasted Devils got the best of Olympique Lyonnais, and perhaps I dreamt him saying, Alas, there’s no way to keep the damned Gooners out of this fine establishment.
The nights I have failed to secure a seat, both times with Tai, the place has been overrun by Arsenal fans. But it is my local, and it is my pub, and it sometimes contains my people. The Tottenham lads just last week, who gleefully played Ange-Out roulette and dreamt of a fresh, near-future managerial appointment. The young man opposite them who screamed “FUCK!” everytime Spurs came close to doing something grand, but ended up doing something stupid. (They scraped the win, and I inhaled so much tobacco smoke that I left for midnight currywurst mit pommes smelling like a casino. Spurs, a small club at Blarney’s, could only be viewed from the smoking room: a tiny box full of pleasant individuals but also of tobacco smoke.) The Brumbies who greeted me enthusiastically, presuming from my skin tone that I must be English, and therefore a Villa man, before settling into the revelation that I was a well-wishing neutral. Then there was the young Parisian in the return leg, maybe he was almost my age, who knows, who yelled “PUTAIN!” every time PSG’s flamboyant frontline played with its food. One of these fine gentlemen, I will not say whom, came up to me upon a half-time and said, “Mate, I’m sorry … but you remind me so much of Ian Wright.” I’ve been called a lot worse, I suppose.
*
On Easter Friday I went and saw Ryan Coogler’s new movie Sinners, with a mate from Zimbabwe and his Iranian partner. I was not at all bullied into this by all the Marketing, which has been abundant. I still have some Michael B. Jordan stock, from his Friday Night Lights era and those interviews he gave about wanting to be a bona fide superstar and not another handy black man (these are my words) who Hollywood could call when it pleased. I will rave to anyone who will listen about his first collaboration with Coogler, on Fruitvale Station, but not so much the subsequent ones (Black Panther and the exquisitely ‘meh’ Creed franchise). Sinners too will be a subsequent one, for its heavy-handedness, a clunky third act, and for containing far too many vampires. I had to camp out at my friends’ apartment for three hours of the evening, during which time I convinced these darlings to concoct tea and watch a Cubs game with me.
I learned that there is still something special about turning on a TV and seeing Wrigley Field glimmer in the sun. It was as if baseball season had only truly commenced just then, with the Arizona Diamondbacks doing their best to spoil a lovely day for the Cubbies. Since swearing an oath of marriage to New York, and helping lay a hex upon Juan Soto, I have kept away from Cubs games. But sometimes, lad, you turn the game on in front of people who think this or that sport is a complete nonsense, and then every other inning that particular game helps you mount a defence. I’d be explaining the strike zone, the theft of bases, RBIs, when someone would crack a home-run and render all of my handsy heuristics irrelevant. In the moment it felt good to be buzzed on the tea of others, to be around people a while longer before the long weekend truly began; but later I assured my friends I might not have enjoyed that game as much on my own, even with all the snacks in the world.
Now, on the back of a scintillating win over the Damned Dodgers, I want Cubs baseball on all the time. I want to come home to it when someone new breaks my heart. I want to read to it. I want to fall asleep to it. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life – not recently, anyway.
*
I spent Saturday morning writing the novel a little bit, deciding what to do with the thing, and then Saturday afternoon realising I am not that great anymore at single-player Call of Duty.
On Sunday I went and saw a distressing French movie at a specifically French cinema I’ve never visited, by an Austrian director who I understand likes to get on everybody’s tits by pushing the envelop. One of my favourite things to do in this city is to sometimes only have a vague idea where I’m going or why, and so I’d decided (days ago, if I’m honest) to track down a restaurant that claimed to serve jerk chicken somewhere near Hackesher Markt. Even when I don’t find a place, when it seems to flitter away from me categorically, in that moment this feels like the point. Hunting for ghosts in a city full of history.
I gave up and dragged myself towards Kilkenny’s, another Irish pub, where Tai and I once caught the North London Derby: the first of Ange Postecoglu’s Spurs tenure actually. What days those were. When I’d ride the tram places with books in hand, discover just how much was available to me and my interests for the first time, when damn near anything felt possible. I remembered Kilkenny’s club sandwich, a devil of a thing with bacon and egg and chicken all jostling for real estate, and asked the bartender for a Rädler. Chelsea were at Fulham and the pub was reasonably empty. I’d stick around til halftime, I thought. Go watch more of the NBA playoffs, especially if Ja Morant could give the Oklahoma City Thunder a modicum of hell. (He couldn’t.) We spoke that day, you and I, and I showed you what I can do in 2K if the internet ping is on my side.
Spurs lost to Nottingham Forest the following evening, capping the long weekend. I remember getting momentarily upset at some early selfishness by Mathys Tel, how he seems to be playing to make a point to his employers at Bayern Munich. When Forest assumed and then doubled their lead, I felt nothing. I wasn’t cross, wasn’t dejected, didn’t have Satan himself threatening to climb out of my maw. Sometimes I wonder, lad: should I keep waiting for conceptual joy — maybe we sign football’s next Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, maybe we enlist Marco Silva to help clean up our mess, maybe we bring back Pochettino, or maybe London calls – or should I grasp at what feels good, what feels right, here and now?
I want to be a Geordie, like my old man. I want to drown my sorrows in Cubbies blue on the hardest days, which are almost always in the summer. I’ll hang onto these Knicks, these Patriots, but not because I have to. I desperately don’t want to trouble anybody or need anything from anyone ever again: I just want to enjoy as much of this rodeo as the universe will allow.
