Right Off the Bat

An Interview with Evander Lomke and Martin Rowe 1. Why did you want to write about cricket AND baseball, rather than just one of the sports?EL: That's an excellent question. This book began as an exchange between ourselves. We didn't have any immediate family member or close friend to share our respective enthusiasms, and just naturally began to note some of the similarities and differences between baseball and cricket as each of us came to know more about the other game. 1996 in New York, especially for pent-up Yankees fans deprived for years of a truly good team, was a magical season. By lucky coincidence, I took Martin to his first baseball game, which was a late-season Fan Appreciation Day at Yankee Stadium. What amazed me was how quickly Martin picked up virtually every aspect of the action. Though all this seemed an act of intuition, in fact Martin was not only already steeped in the similar game of cricket he knew something of rounders--an even closer antecedent of baseball. As we started on this book many years later, we wanted to convey our respective enthusiasms to each other first, and by extension to all fans of "the other" first-cousin sport.MR: This is Martin. I was tired of the snobbery from the cricket fans and willful ignorance from the Yanks. These are two great games, and they need to get to know each other better. 2. Cricket seems such a long game with lots of arcane rules. Why should it appeal to Americans?MR: Well, as the former head of USA Cricket said, Americans can follow a golf tournament over four days, and four rounds, why shouldn't they be able to follow a cricket game, which can last over five days? Actually, the shortest form of the game of cricket--Twenty20--we note in the book, is very similar in length to a baseball game: four hours, lots of music, dugouts, big hits, and timeouts.EL: Once baseball fans come to understand how intense cricket can be, and how it's played year round, and can be seen all over the Internet, the baseball off-season will be no more. Fans will be able to drive their partners crazy year-round. 3. What did you learn about each sport that surprised you?EL: I was amazed by what I would call the parallel worlds or even universes of baseball and cricket. Watching YouTube clips of cricket games, whether from the 1940s or the 1970s or more recent eras, one sees incredible similarities in everything from the styles of play reflecting generational attitudes to the actual look of the players themselves. In the 1940s and 1950s, it's all business in cricket. Watch any clip of The Greatest Generation's heroes or even something like the recently unearthed Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. The game was faster and there was much less posing for the cameras. Both games went through a crisis over money in the 1970s, and players in both games now make the kind of money that far exceeds the imagination of earlier generations. The parallels are eerie.MR: I guess I wasn't that surprised by much in baseball. Except it surprised me to think just how much failure governs batting in baseball. To miss two-thirds of the time and still be considered a great tells me just how hard that ball is to hit. I think cricket lovers would do well to remember that. 4. Who is your favorite player in the other game--and why?EL: This is Evander. It's got to be Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff. He's what's known as an all-rounder, which means he can bowl (pitch) and hit equally well. It's a rare combination in cricket, and even rarer in baseball outside of the high-school level. Babe Ruth was the ultimate all-rounder (if the term had existed here). There have been others--great pitchers who could hit well, for example, but none to the point of making a transition to a regular-field position as Ruth did. The all-rounder is akin to a figure like Shakespeare himself, who was a great actor as well as script writer. Flintoff was a big guy for the big occasion: In some ways, he almost parallels Mickey Mantle--with his charisma and injuries.MR: For me, Martin, it has to be Mariano Rivera, the legendary closer for the Yankees. Utterly cool and professional. To be so in command of your talent that the opposition knows in its heart that the ball game is lost when he jogs on to the field is something rare. And he seems a really nice guy as well, which helps. 5. You write about the similar notions of "timing" and "time" in cricket and baseball. Please explain.MR: Timing was my idea. Both baseball and cricket revel in notions of nostalgia--a mythic time when their games were purer, or when we were younger, and time didn't seem to matter. They both ask us to remember moments out of time--like Bobby Thomson's famous "Shot Heard Round the World" in the play-off game for the 1951 pennant. They depend on players being able to bring the bat through the line of the ball at exactly the right time. They both go on a long time, and both have streaks that expand the notion of time--such as Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak or Cal Ripken Jr.'s run of consecutive games.EL: They're also not so clock-dependent, unlike basketball, football, or soccer. So there's something timeless about both games--befitting their role in at least the English and American psyches as summer games. But, as we said, both games are now very international, so we expect the eternal verities ascribed to baseball and cricket will change.