Baseball dominates the American sporting scene during the summer months. It receives wall-to-wall TV coverage and is in your face everywhere you go - in pubs, airports and private houses, writes An Moltóir …

Despite numerous previous trips Stateside, An Moltóir never before had occasion to actually attend a live game. Well, on his recent trip this experiential deficit was finally made up, and your scribe found himself among the milling throng descending on Wrigley Field, home to the Chicago Cubs. The top baseball teams play a bewildering number of games during the season - some 160 in all, which means that they play most days during the season. Despite this - and possibly because the Cubs are currently top of their league section - it was a full house (41,000) on a Friday afternoon for the game against St. Louis Cardinals.

Now, An Moltóir had a general idea of what baseball is about, and with the assistance of a knowledgeable local companion, he quickly was apprised of the finer details of the game. Like that other mainstay of American sport, football (in which the foot is rarely used for anything else except standing and running on), baseball is very much a stop-start affair. Most of the time nothing much is happening, then there is a quick burst of activity when the pitcher throws and usually the hitter misses (or doesn’t even attempt to hit). Even when he does hit, he is usually caught or run out, so plays where anything significant happens only occur every now and again in an overall game span of about three hours.

An Moltóir mused that this must help explain the notoriously short attention span of many Americans which, among other things, presents such a major conundrum for TV programmers, as they struggle to retain the interest of couch potatoes armed with a remote control and dozens of available channels. Certainly during this game, those in attendance spent most of the time either chatting to each other, or walking out and back to the refreshment stalls and the toilets (frequently needed, as everyone appeared to be guzzling beer or pop all the time in the intense summer heat). One suspects that if they were subjected to the non-stop high-intensity action of one of this year’s hurling championship matches, it would have blown their minds. As it was, the crowd really only focused collectively on the game in the last ten minutes, when the Cubs were defending a one-run lead and endeavouring (successfully, as it transpired) to get the last three Cardinals hitters out without conceding a run.

The immediate impression An Moltóir got when first entering the ground was that there was a festive atmosphere such as you might get at a Munster final. It was clearly a real family day out, with men, women and children in evidence in roughly equal numbers. And, while there were none of the flags and funny hats which have become part of the modern GAA scene, most people were wearing team colours in one guise or other. The other thing that immediately struck An Moltóir was the wall-to-wall retail outlets running right around under the stands, and serving every conceivable kind of fast food as well as drinks, souvenirs, sports shirts, caps, badges, etc. This contrasts sharply with the couple of miserly hot dog stands patrons of the new Croke Park have to put up with, or the ramshackle counters in Semple Stadium selling programmes and chocolate bars.

The GAA is really losing out on a great opportunity here, not just to make some extra money but to add to the festive and family-centred nature of big-match occasions. If, for example, Semple Stadium installed an array of different fast food outlets under the stands, with plenty of plastic seating, a couple of bars and live music, families might be inclined to come along earlier and stay around later, thus removing some of the traffic congestion before and after matches. This is unlikely to do much damage to existing catering outlets in the town of Thurles itself, as most people attending these games don’t use these outlets on the way to and from big games anyway. Such a move would also enhance the GAA’s commitment to family groups which, to be honest, has never been the best.

Mention of Croke Park’s hot dog outlets set An Moltóir thinking that they constitute an odd reflection on the GAA’s supposed commitment to the cultivation of the best of Irish culture. The first time your scribe had occasion to venture into the Premium section of the new Cusack Stand (just for the experience, you understand), he was very impressed to find that the main fare available at the hot food outlet was a big, ignorant lump of baked ham stuffed between two halves of a submarine sandwich loaf. This, An Moltóir concluded, as he tucked into this succulent feast, with juice and melted butter pouring in torrents all over his carefully laundered county jersey, was what being Irish and being part of the GAA was all about!

Imagine An Moltóir’s consternation, then, on a subsequent visit to the same section (one does have a friend who knows a businessman, and it wasn’t a high-profile game anyway) when it transpired that the main food fare on offer was chicken tikka in pitta bread. One imagines that they eat nothing else in the Homes of Tipperary and the Hills of Donegal. Is it any wonder, in a country which is nowadays awash with money, that the wonderful institution of the flask of tea and the “hang” sangwiches consumed off the bonnet of the car on the side of the road, is still widely observed at GAA venues all over the country?

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