Well its been a while since we have added a new post. My apologies, but not a lot has been happening as of late. Liz and I have been toiling with our prospects when the season ends. I have been trying to get some more baseball work in Italy, or Amsterdam (surprisingly they have a paying league there..) but it seems to be falling through for some reason. However I am starting tomorrow for the Australian National team against Chinese Taipei. They have a pretty good league over there with some decent money so here's hoping I impress someone tomorrow.
"Team USA" played Chinese Taipei on Tuesday. I use the title Team USA loosely because when I arrived for the game, (which I could not pitch in because I thew 11 innings two days before) the locker room was full of Australians. It turned out it was the Australian National team preparing for the World Baseball Classic playing, with a couple American pitchers and a middle infielder. It was a fun night though, seeing a few guys from Australia that I had spent a lot of time with playing in the states. We ended up winning 8-2. The funny part was seeing all these Aussies in USA jerseys. We did not have enough jerseys so people were swapping them when they would come out of the game, handing over sweat soaked tops to the next pitcher, or position player entering the game.
Now here in Perth there is a large Asian population, so when we came out before the game it was no surprise to see the stands full of Chinese Taipei fans. Flags were waving. Huge drums were being played. One man was running back and forth on the dugout screaming things, (in Chinese?) rousing the crowd at various moments. It was then time for the Anthems. The Chinese Taipei was played first. Technical difficulties ensued and the song was finished by the fans. It was pretty funny. Then the Star Spangled Banner was played for "Team USA" while the 34 Aussies and five Americans listened. I leaned over during the scene whispering to a fellow American "This is definitely blog-worthy..." I waited for the dragons to run across the field but they never came.
Chinese culture and athletics have been on my mind lately thanks to a great Christmas gift from our mates Jason and Alex. They purchased tickets for us to see the Cirque du Soleil' production of Dralion. It was billed as East meets West, west being Africa which I thought was interesting as well. Now I had never been to a show like this and had no Idea what to expect. The scene in "Knocked Up" where they freaked out in Vegas and had to leave was all I could think about. It was unbelievable. The sheer size of the production was enough to impress before anyone had even taken the stage. When they did take the stage the dedication to perfection blew me away. Not to mention the incredible feats these athletes were performing, perfectly. Later I heard that if the acrobats, jugglers, dancers, mess up twice they are off the show.
The first up was an Asian girl (not more than 14 years of age I would guess) pushed herself up onto a post. She then held herself inverted on one arm for about 5 minutes twisting and contorting herself into extremely unnatural positions, switched arms and repeated. Very hard to describe but it was a must see for sure. Then people were jumping on trampolines flipping, flying up walls, walking up and down walls, landing upside down on platforms and metal grids. Then tumbling through hoops, but as I said earlier this description does it no justice. Imagine 5 rings atop one another, with lines of gymnasts in each corner flying through them backwards, forwards, 2, 3, 4 at a time, Never touching the rings that were just slightly bigger than the people. I would not have fit through them even if I tried to crawl through and they were flying through. Then flips on balls, juggling like you would not believe, high flying dances swinging from colorful scarves, and short comedy routines by Italian ringmasters mixed in to seamlessly fit the whole show together. Amazing. If you ever get a chance to go and haven't, do it.
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