Will baseball, America's staple sport, catch on in India?
Things American are already a rage here, the latest being `Charlie's Angels'. But, the current debate is about baseball and the reluctance of Indians to imbibe the sport.
Two baseball experts flew into India recently to teach Indians baseball know-how and, predictably, invited considerable attention. Their effort is part of India's amateur baseball federation's move to boost the game in the country, and add further drops to the ocean of America that exists here.
Symbols of American life that pervade India include kids grown up on MTV lingo, `Friends' and HBO, sounding more American than Americans. Pepsi and Coke, Pizza Hut and Macdonald's, CNN and Fox, Kentucky Fried Chicken and IBM, have set up shop and are a part of every day life and culture and also the subject of public ire each time there is a ventilation of anti-American sentiments.
News follows Christian Amanpour as much as Britney Spears or Jennifer Aniston. `Bruce Almighty' registered a good opening while Julia Roberts is the Pretty Woman and India's Sweetheart as well. A mass of Indians employed as call center executives masquerade as Americans (Reena becomes Ron) on phone, catering to a Citibank account holders' inquiries from Oklahoma.
Indians also know that George Bush's (mis) pronunciations on TV affect their lives as much as Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee -- an attack on Iraq that can wreck stock market fortunes here or a meet with President Musharraf of Pakistan at Camp David that is a matter of life and death in Kashmir. Jay Leno jokes abound.
But, it is in sports that American influence has been rather limited. Indians don't understand American football and don't play baseball. Basketball is practiced by a few, while boxing news is limited to Evander Holyfield in the ring and Mike Tyson off it.
If there is one game that has taken recent root in the country, it is golf, proven by the proliferation of golf courses in the last few years. But, this has been more of a corporate effort than a people response, which means golf is fast turning into a popular game of the rich. Further, golf is as European as American. Similarly, there is an increasing stock of people interested in Formula-1 racing and bowling.
But baseball is as true as American can be. Thus, when two American baseball coaches arrived here, the talk centered around why do Indians who have taken to every American facet, including accent, like fish to water, resist baseball?
The answer lies in a continental divide. What baseball is to America, soccer is to Europe, cricket is to the Indian sub-continent consisting of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and India. If Europe cannot look beyond David Beckham, whom Americans ignored on his recent trip to promote football in the US, Indians cannot see beyond Sachin Tendulkar, the cricketing God of India.
This writer is not aware of a single baseball player. Only that Michael Jordan is, or till recently was, the God of America and Reebok -- or was it Nike. If Sachin steps out of his house in India, David in England, Michael in America, it is news as flashy as it can get.
When golf made its hesitant beginnings in India, a prominent coach from the famous David Leadbetter academy said, “Indians will never learn how to play golf as they can play no game unlike cricket. So, a slice is a cover drive to the right and a hook is an on-drive to the left.'' The coach was wrong -- Indians took to golf and there is a legion of Indian golfers now, making more money than most cricketers, which was just a dream a while ago.
But, will the golf case mean baseball can succeed as well? To reverse the question, could cricket translate into an American success, like Indian curry and `Bend it Like Beckham'? What are the chances of Sachin Tendulkar turning God in America? He is an icon in England, South Africa and Australia, where Donald Bradman is on the pedestal.
Essentially, cricket and baseball look similar on TV. There is a guy who chucks the ball, another who wields the bat, catchers all around and, to make a run, you need to run. If the two are just different garbs, and sports as we know can bring people together, as was attempted by the recent US-Iraq football match, baseball and cricket should build further bridges between India and US.
It will not be so easy. Indeed, to make any beginning, one has to further ask whether Americans would like to watch Sachin on Oprah, or would Oprah feature Sachin. This writer wouldn't watch an unnamed baseball star on a TV chat show here -- Sachin on ESPN/Star Sports any day. It is the icons that create a particular sporting spirit -- Germany took to tennis after Boris Becker, Beligum, after Justin Henin, and the world has taken to golf after Tiger Woods.
Sports can be an intense personal choice -- hamburgers from Macdonald's may not be changing filiations, but here it is a matter of changing Gods -- from Sachin to Michael or vice versa. It can be an impossible decision or a matter of time. Unless Anna Kournikova chooses to play both, which has nothing to do with God or tennis.
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