A slow and sober look around the field
Some sort of cricket-type activity
This weekend, Major League Baseball opens the 2014 season half a world away in Sydney, Australia. The venue will be the Sydney Cricket Ground, a place that, as the name implies, is commonly used to host cricket matches. If you thought this was the first time an American tradition made an appearance here though, you would be wrong. In fact, nothing that could happen this weekend would have a chance of being the strangest thing a foreigner had done on this field. But before we get to that, let’s take a look around.
The Sydney Cricket Ground has been around in one form or another since the late 19th century. Instead of a single stadium structure around the field, the Sydney Cricket Ground has a set of separate stands. The oldest of these stands date to the late 19th century. The Members’ Pavilion, shown above, was originally built in 1878 and then rebuilt in 1886. The Ladies’ Stand (not shown), is located just to the left of the Members’ Pavilion and opened in 1896.
The rest of the stands, despite being separate structures, essentially form a modern stadium. Continuing around counterclockwise are, from right to left above, Brewongle Stand (1980), Clive Churchill Stand (1986), and Victor Trumper Stand (2008).
Next up is the Bill O’Reilly Stand (1984), which, despite having the Fox Studios Australia tower looming overhead, is not named for that Bill O’Reilly.
And that brings us around to the M.A. Noble, Bradman, and Messenger stands, which are behind what is now home plate and have just been rebuilt. And since my photos are from 2010, this will be the end of the structural tour.
Of course, you’ll see most of this during the games anyway. What you won’t see are the Aussie-flavour ads that have been removed from the stands. Back in 2010, these were largely encouraging people to drive slower by equating fast driving with diminished manhood. Meanwhile, the bathrooms were encouraging responsible drinking via the threat of violence delivered by a bouncer who your drinking causes you to pick a fight with while the buddy who was kind enough to walk you home just stands there and watches you get your face smashed in instead of dragging your sorry ass out of harm’s way. Or maybe just getting you into a car and driving away really fast.
Luckily, the ads also propose a solution to both of these problems. Put a pub in your backyard! You won’t need to drive anywhere or get into drunken arguments with bouncers when you do your binge drinking at home. That’s Aussie ingenuity for you, second only to Scottish ingenuity as we’ll see later.
Part 2: A different American tradition takes the field down under
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