For Cookies and Cricket

I had the feeling I was already behind schedule before I ever left Barranquilla. I didn’t realize yet how badly I was underestimating the road home. For past last three weeks my ass has been on a bus, boat, or where I can find them, an exercise bike--I was advised to get some training in before biking the Natchez Trace--when not sweating its way through the jungle.

I count just under 100 hours in motion. Granted, just about every first year Wall Street analyst I knew boasted about working 100 hours a week, back when they still had jobs. So maybe there is time, but I’ve been spending those hours watching the stars, or hitting the nearest Salsa bar to practice my Spanish. I've had less computer time than I'd like, and I now find myself carrying my notebook by hand apart from my bags. If I get robbed, I have no backup for those pages. Maybe it wouldn't matter, losing the real details I'd just make up others. The stories tend to get better with time anyway.



I could have spent a month alone on the way to Panama. 400 of the most pristine islands on earth sit off the Panamanian Caribbean Coast, and the Kuna Yalu who govern the area prefer to cram themselves onto less than 50 of the islands, leaving the rest uninhabited. I leave them for another trip. As I do Costa Rica.

Wait, that last part is not true. I could live a happy life without ever visiting Costa Rica again. Hard to explain how a country with beautiful nature, super-green energy policy, and miles of gorgeous coast line could be so far down my list of top countries. I blame it on the gringo real estate bonanza. Maybe the Depression up north has washed some of the undesirables away, did not have time to confirm, though my suspicion is that it will take years for the locals to forget the invasion.

Central America looks so tiny on the map. 42 hours busing the Panamericana from Panama and I would have thought I'd be much further along than El Salvador. Five countries in just under ten days is the kind of all-American blitz travel I vowed to never do again after my first experience with a Euro rail pass. It's not so much that it's exhausting as that such speed necessitates closing doors to opportunities along the way. Goodness gracious, I have a good life when my sole complaint of the year is that I don’t have enough time to enjoy my travels!

I did make my one mandatory site seeing visit to a forgotten graveyard outside a passed over town in Southern Nicaragua. I had forgotten to bring along the old musters with clues as to which gringos might have been buried on the grown over hill. I'll read the names when I get home and then write it up, I don't think they will mind, I might have been the first person to knowingly visit them in years, so they can wait a few more weeks for the publicity.

Without a few cookies on the trail I might have said to hell with it and holed up in one of the mountain towns I didn't have time for. But I'm a sports fan, and a jingoist--two nations could be playing cricket and I'd take an interest.

This is not hyperbole. When procrastinating over my master’s thesis, what still may be the shortest paper ever to receive honors in Global History at LSE, I took a committed interest in a five day Test Match between England and the West Indies. I was writing about Jamaica so it didn't seem to be that off topic, I mean, I was watching Jamaicans who may have been ancestors of the 17th century slaves I was writing about. That week five years ago I could have explained the rules and terminology of cricket to you, and I could have offered an opinion on each team’s five day strategy. I watched every over of the first four, shouting the updates to my amused English housemates who were busy in the garden. I made Turkish coffee for tea time.

Alas, it wasn’t much of a Test. England didn't need the fifth day to retire the Windies side. Sometime between then and the close of the Olympics, the paper got written, a small miracle.

This is all to say that when two nations compete mock-warfare, I am interested. In a sport I actually care about, when I hold a passport from one of the nations mock-warring, it is ON.

The carrot that got me here ahead of schedule is USA versus El Salvador this Saturday in a qualifying match for the World Cup.

El Salvador just elected a president from the FMLN, a former Communist guerrilla outfit whose campaign was financed by Hugo Chavez, ending 20 years of conservative rule, and all anyone can talk about is how La Seleccion (national team) will do against Tio Sam. It is bad manners to talk politics with strangers, but even the leftists marching around with bullhorns outside the National University gave me their opinion about the match. I was surprised the young Communists had an opinion on the game as they looked like the kind of purists who might have shunned the consumption of mass opiates. Not one of them predicted victory, so at least their pessimism was in character.


The press here believes US soccer has arrived to elite status thanks to a combination of excellent player development, a competent domestic league, and a coherent, Teutonic style of ball control and balanced attack. It's partly hype to build up the home side's status as underdog, but it's also a reflection of the growing consensus that the USA, not Mexico, is now the reigning hegemon of CONCACAF.

I asked the receptionist at my guesthouse the safest section of the stadium to view the match. She told me to watch it on TV in the hotel. I opted instead for the expensive seats, and a twelve dollar El Salvador knock-off jersey. After a walk in the jungle what's a little international rivalry amongst rich strangers.

The next carrot is on Mexico's Caribbean coast late next week. Until then, I've got some chants to learn and a mustache to grow.

I am halfway home.

More on that graveyard, and how to cross the Darien Gap in a manner that is not a creative endeavor in suicide, to follow. I promise.
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WBC and the 2009 San Francisco Giants

Forget Spring Training. The World Baseball Classic opened in the wee hours this morning when defending champion Japan hosted the best nine baseball players so far produced by a country of 1.2 billion people. I can't imagine baseball catching on in China, but 4-0 is a competitive result, and with 1.2 billion people, you never know.

The WBC has the potential to be the most exciting international sporting event second only to the World Cup. With representation from the six habitable continents and passionate fans on three of them, the event lives up to its world billing. And as long as Fidel clings to life, any contest with the potential for a USA v Cuba championship is worth watching.

Alas, it is an unlikely showdown. While the double-elimination format for the group stages is an improvement on the round robin style of the inaugural WBC, the single game semi-finals and final are statistically coin tosses. On ther side, this means that over half of the sixteen entrants are contenders. The USA, Japan, Cuba, Mexico, South Korea, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and even Canada have a conceivable shot at the title.

I have tickets to the finals in LA in three weeks, though due to my new itinerary I will not be in attendance. Fortunately I will be passing through baseball crazed Panama and Nicaragua during the tournament, and I look forward to seeing how much interest the WBC generates in Central America.



For the first time since 2004, I will not be attending the Giants opening day at Willie Mays Plaza and McCovey Cove. Strangely, this is the first year I am a season ticket holder. I am just too far away to make back for the first week of April. Thanks to Al Gore and his world wide web, I can still deliver my pre-season analysis from abroad.

The Giants surprised me last season. I thought a best case scenario for that club would have been 70 wins. They won 72. 2008 was the start of a rebuild that if done correctly will take another five seasons, and the 72-90 was an over achievement considering the circumstances. Tim Lincecum´s 2.62 ERA and 265 strike out year won him the Cy Young in his sophomore campaign jumps to mind. A couple of veterans, Randy Winn and Bengie Molina had career years and rookies Fred Lewis, Pablo Sandoval, and Emmanuel Burriss outperformed expectations. They combined to keep what could have been an historically atrocious offense merely miserable.

The team also benefited from lucky run distribution. With one of MLB's worst bullpens, the 2008 squad still managed to go an NL best 31-21 in one run games.


With significant upgrades in the bullpen, a grizzled Randy Johnson, and a league average shortstop to replace an offensive black hole, there is no doubting the 2009 squad will be better than the 2008 team. The roster looks about 10 wins better on paper.

On paper last year's squad should have won 67 games, and on paper we can see that our two young pitching studs both were in the top ten of pitches thrown last year. Pitchers tend have comedown years after bearing such heavy workloads.

Infield defense is also a huge question mark. A declining Edgar Renteria who reportedly has minimal range to his left, a ball of lard (with soft hands) in Pablo Sandoval whom no scout considers a legitimate MLB third baseman, and a pick of rookies on the keystone mean we could be watching a lot of balls puttering into the outfield this season.

And don't forget the luck. Should this year's team be as snake bit as last year's team was lucky, the Giants could be looking at another 72-75 win season. I'm going to say 78-84, good for third place in the NL West.

The organization as a whole is on the right track. The Giants are finally spending money on the most cost effective returns in the baseball universe, best available talent in the first round of the draft. They are also signing hyped prodigies in the Dominican Republic, stepping up international scouting, and committing more manpower and resources to their domestic scouting operations.

The results are starting to percolate up through minor leagues. The Giants had the 2008 Pitcher of the Year in three different levels of the minors, in addition to 2006 draftee Tim Lincecum´s Cy Young. Scouting magazine Baseball America ranked the Giants farm system as the fifth best in baseball, the highest ranking the organization has ever received.

But at the same time Sabean keeps adding bad contracts to the big club. Last year's 60 million to a tick above average Aaron Rowand made no sense during a rebuild. This year's 18.5 million to Renteria is in part attributed to bad timing. Though with the Giants the only club interested, a few months wait could have netted Renteria for a year at the five million range, similar to what they A's did with the other Colombian shortstop on the market this winter, Orlando Cabrera. Meanwhile, the 100+ million owed to a guy who will never again be more than a back of the rotation starter is the albatross that will rot on the ownerships' purse strings for another five years

By then a few of the half-dozen heralded prospects will emerge as the next crop of homegrown stars San Franciscans haven't seen the likes of since Will Clark and Matt Williams in the 80's.

It will be a long wait.
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