Gardner WebLog

Well it was a successful weekend for the London Mets organization.  All together, the teams won five and only lost one.  There are four different teams competing right now for the program.  The Broncos which range from about nine to twelve years old are divided into two teams and play on Saturdays.  I stayed in London and helped run the games with another coach.  There is one high school aged team which will be the team I will be coaching, but they didn’t play this weekend.  The last team is the men’s team, and we played on Sunday leaving with two victories, but I will explain the details later.

I showed up early on Saturday with the club president Neil and another American coach Steve.  He’s a great guy who just moved to London from Tokyo after living there for 14 years.  He speaks fluent Japanese (he married a Japanese woman and has two kids who play on the team), this helps with the several Japanese kids who play.  While we were setting up the field he was telling me stories about little league over in Japan, when they would spend more than six hours out on the field practicing several times a week.  Where they find this time I have no idea, but all the Japanese kids have very good fundamentals and mechanics.  One of the Japanese kids was there with his dad practicing way before the game, receiving sharp comments, rolled eyes, and sighs every time one of his pitches was inaccurate.  It was similar to the response Adam, Nathan, and I would get from our father, only that was from nearly breaking the Brown’s (neighbors) window, ruining their flowers, or barely missing their annoying little dog.  Anyways, they were very intense, but good. 

We played a doubleheader, two six inning games.  We lost the first one and won the second, by a lot.  There a few mini-A.Rods on our team (including Daichi, not sure if I spelled that right, the kid who showed up early with his dad.) I forgot how great little league baseball was, just watching kids play baseball and have fun, simple as that.  The great thing about the London baseball league is that it provides an alternative sport for kids who don’t want to play soccer (or were told they weren’t good enough to play or go anywhere with it) because soccer is by far the most dominant youth sport in England.  It also provides a positive time for the kids, which some of them don’t get while at home.  I noticed there really weren’t a lot of parents at the field all day, the kids just showed up on their bikes, or walked to the park.  You can tell the kids really just like just spending time having fun playing a sport.  It was great to meet the kids and have fun coaching a little.

Neil gave me a ride down to Croydon, where we played on Sunday.  The field wasn’t too bad for a baseball field outside London.  We took BP, had a warm-up pregame, and then got going right at noon.  The umpire was American and not all that different from SCIAC umpires, cream uniform, oakleys and all.  I started in center and batted third, here comes the big American slugger…not really.  I really didn’t hit that well, not adjusting well to the slower than usual pitching you see in the SCIAC.  I had a few base hits, but I have had my better days.  One of the highlights of the day for me though, had nothing to do with the game of baseball.  In between games, a WWII British Lancaster Bomber took off from an old airfield right behind the trees from the field.  It flew around very low to the ground in big figure eights for about fifteen minutes.   Even the British players were frozen staring at the plane just cruising around.  It was great.

I pitched the second game and struck out around ten players in five innings.  The team we played was in the division below us, so I guess it was a good warm-up after not pitching in over a month or so.  There is a slaughter rule after five, so the game ended quickly.  I’m still really sore even from throwing only five innings, and not many pitches.  I’m lucky we only play every Sunday. 

After I got back I threw some stuff in a backpack and took the bus down to the south bank to see Big Ben, the London Eye, and all that good stuff.  There were tons of people around, including an odd mini-British techno rave on the beach near the river, on a Sunday night… I just kept walking.  After a snack and a beer I headed back to Stoke Newington which is where I live.  It’s in Northeast London.  Well that’s all for now, sorry this post was incredibly long, I had a busy weekend.  If any of you are interested, my address here is:

48 Chesholm Rd.
London N16 0DR 

Talk to you all soon, cheers. 

Kyle