see a post here from one of my favorite blogs, written by the mcclatchey newspapers correspondent in beijing. he writes about experiences with chinese spectators in the stands at olympic events, something i talked about earlier, but in a much less coherent fashion.
i bring this up because, although i thought i was pretty much done with the olympics, somebody at work found a whole bunch of tickets to wednesday night's usa-japan baseball game. of course i wanted to go anyway, but i also thought it would be interesting to see who the chinese fans would root for, since at previous events i've seen them cheer for whatever team/athlete is playing against the us or japan. i figured they'd go for the usa, since chinese history with japan is a little thicker and more clear cut than their current relationship with the us. one of my coworkers hinted that i was right when she asked if i was from the usa then said that we would all be rooting for the usa tonight. or maybe she was just being supportive?
but surprisingly, the people around us in the bleachers at the game were rather quiet, which is the opposite of my experience in oakland, where they tend to be quite rowdy, to put it mildly. there was one chinese guy who cheered continuously for the american team throughout the game, though his repertoire was rather limited, consisting simply of shouting "U-S-A! U-S-A!" over and over.
i think there were two reasons for the subdued nature of the crowd. first of all, like in the states, the bleachers are the cheap seats. however, in olympic baseball in china, the people that are really excited about the game are all from overseas, and so want to spend (only slightly more) money to get the better seats. for example, the huge, loud japanese contingent had pretty good digs, near where we sat for the previous game. those buying cheap tickets are expats like us or locals who couldn't get/afford anything else. back home, however, the cheap seats attract the heavy drinking and heavy fighting riff-raff, which can make sitting in the bleachers quite exciting.
the second, and probably more important, reason is that the game was scoreless through ten innings with only five total hits, and therefore there was nothing to get worked up about, though there were a couple spectacular defensive plays. a's prospect trevor cahill (thanks mark for the info) pitched a solid seven innings, and i'm not sure if the japanese pitchers were good or if the american batters were just bad. but the extra-innings game allowed me to see the ridiculousness that is the 11th inning in 2008 olympic baseball. starting in the 11th, when batting each team starts off with a runner at first and second, and gets to bat in whatever order they want. which is crazy! so of course the game ended then, usa on top 4-2. (i also discovered earlier in the day that they use the slaughter (mercy) rule, after cuba beat china 17-1 in only seven innings.) however, most people had left at that point, so it actually just ended up with american and japanese fans rooting for their own teams, in the true olympic spirit. though that one guy was still going strong.
"U-S-A! U-S-A!"
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