SportsCenter

Tis the season. October is one of my favorite months. It is at this point of the year that the end of the semester/quarter is in sight, and winter break is just around the bend. But October is one of the best months for one reason and one reason only: sports. The lethal combination of playoff baseball and a fresh hockey season would usually have me planted in front of a television for hours on end. But given the circumstances, this would be an impossibility. Or is it?

Thank the good lord for Champs Sportsbar. Champs is an amazing place. Not only do they have a satellite that picks up American channels, but they also have the only Mexican food in Accra (the fajitas are pretty good, I must say). It’s a nice break from rice and chicken, or fufu, or any other Ghanaian food that we’ve become somewhat sick of.

Wednesday, October 4^th – ALDS Game 2: A’s vs. Twins.

I woke up Wednesday filled with anticipation. 12 hours until first pitch of Game 2. I missed Game 1 – Barry Zito’s unbelievable 8 inning performance – yesterday because I was totally shot from my 11 hour travel day from Sefwi Wiawso. I would not miss Game 2. But first, I had some business to take care of.

Classes are halfway through, and for one class – Gov in Ghana – I am finished. I am done going to that class. The professor really sucks. He dictates horribly and there is nothing he said that could be called analysis. He has essentially given us a timeline for what has happened since 1957. I’m not going to waste my time with that anymore; I’d rather just get a couple books and learn it for myself. So I walked out of that class half way through at around 1:30 (three and half hours until first pitch).

I grabbed my standard lunch – rice, pasta, salad, chicken stew – and tried to figure out the next couple of hours. By the time I was done with lunch, it was 2:30. Two hours should be easy to kill. I jumped on the internet, talked with the parents via webcam, which is the coolest thing ever, checked mail and read the previews for Game 2.

I rolled back to Legon Hall around 4:25 where I ran into Mark, my partner in crime for viewing these games. I asked him when he planned to leave, to which he responded “30 to 60 seconds.” It has arrived.

We “negotiated” for a taxi, which was a joke. It’s hard enough to get a fair price on a taxi because we’re white, but taxi drivers always have an excuse for wanting more money: it’s early, there’s traffic, it’s late. It’s always something. This time, being around 4:30, there would be traffic. Being in a hurry though, we took a cab for 40,000 – 10-15,000 more than usual. Mark laid into the driver for a couple minutes. Naturally, there was absolutely no traffic. Ridiculous. I threw in my two cents of anger as we got out of the taxi. But we were here, and it’s baseball time.

Minus the back-to-back homers that he gave up, Esteban Loaiza pitched a gem of a game – more than we could have asked for. Thank god that Torii Hunter made an idiotic play, trying to get out of the inning, that resulted in a two-run inside-the-park homerun. And with the rock-solid bullpen of Kiko Calero, Justin Duchscherer and Huston Street, it was over. A’s win, A’s win, 4-2. Up two-nothing in the series, things looked promising for moving into the ALCS.

Thursday, October 5^th – Living on 90 Minutes of Sleep

Quite literally the worst sleep of my life. I was exhausted after the ballgame and looked forward to a lovely night of sleep. However, my body and a couple hundred water-bearing Ghanaian students had other ideas.

Right around midnight, a large rumble came from downstairs – more “fresher” initiation. All the freshmen are getting tagged with water. Some of them try to run, but they are always caught and dragged back. It’s pretty funny to watch, but it does look awfully painful. All students not participating – including me – stood out on the balconies watching the events.

By 1AM, I was ready to crash. I couldn’t fall asleep for the life of me. Too many thoughts running through my head. About baseball, about fresher initiation, about whatever else. I knew I needed to sleep, because I would be up at 6:30 for class. After rolling around, flipping around, and who knows what else, I fell asleep – at 5. This is going to be a fun day.

I was surprisingly awake for class. Back to back classes from 7:30 to 11:30 are not so bad. The content is fairly interesting, and the second professor showed up late so I was able to put my head down for about 45 minutes.

I don’t remember much of what I did for the rest of Thursday. I sure didn’t do much. I read up on the Sharks thrilling 5-4 overtime victory and grabbed some lunch, which came just at the right time. I was losing it quickly and all those carbs gave me a good boost. By 4, I was done. I crawled into bed, laid down, and caught a glorious nap, until dinner time. Dinner gave me a second or third or whatever wind, enough to play a couple games of Hearts with Duncan and Rags. Once it got late, I just wanted to see if I could make it to midnight. And I did. That day is just a blur.

Friday, October 6^th – Still Ballin’

Today was a very productive day, especially considering the late hour at which I got out of bed. My clothes which I had washed a couple days prior we’re finally dry and were in desperate need of ironing (I’m so domestic). I finished my ironing, and started cleaning my room a bit, which has slowly deteriorated into a garbage dump. Satisfied with the state of the room I walked over to the UC study center to print a rough draft of a paper for a professor to read. Of course, he wasn’t in his office for his scheduled office hours. I’ll try again next week, I guess.

Around 3, I ran into a couple of kids with tennis racquets. Intrigued, I asked them where they were going to play and asked if I could join. I borrowed a friend’s racquet and made my way up. This should be very interesting.

I’m sometimes amazed at how quickly I can get my game back together. It’s been 10 weeks since I’ve had a racquet in my hand, and there were many other conditions which should have made me suck: a racquet I’ve never played with, clay courts – which I have never played on – and African heat and humidity, which is like nothing I’ve played in.

I was thrown right into the fire, and played a tie-breaker against the #2 kid in the school. I lost valiantly 7-5, fairly satisfied with my performance. Playing on clay courts is a different beast. It’s a dirty game, both figuratively and literally. Slice and dropshots are utilized a lot more, which doesn’t really suit my game. And the clay, which to be honest was just glorified dirt here, made my socks orange. It would take some getting used to. For the rest of the afternoon, I played doubles – my game for sure – with a girl who I think was bigger around than tall. But I know that I can make anyone better in doubles, so I ran with it. We were playing the #3 and 4 guys. After dropping the first three games, we turned it on, eventually winning the set, 7-5. I played much better, if it can be called that.

Drenched in sweat, and just an hour from ALDS Game 3, I was in need of a shower like no other. And just my luck, the water is running! I sprinted from my room to the bathroom, and take the best shower I’ve taken since being here. It was perfectly cold. I threw some clothes on, and Mark, Haley, Duncan and I made our way back to Champs Sportsbar.

We ran into a bunch of girls from EAP who we hadn’t seen in a while, so it was nice to chat with them for a bit.

But we had higher priorities: food and baseball. Dan Haren was on the mound for the A’s and he was dealing. Eric Chavez finally decided to hit the ball, coming up with a no-doubter homerun and a double. Marco Scutaro continued hitting RBI doubles. And the trio in the bullpen closed it for a beautiful 8-3 victory – a clean sweep of the Minnesota Twins. As the players drenched each other in alcohol, we celebrated over a beer.

Just as the game ended, Karaoke Night at Champs was starting. I was way too entertained to leave. I got another beer, and enjoyed the performances, drunkenly singing along with the rest of the crowd.

Saturday October 8^th – Highlife

No sports today. A rather tame day. The night was a different story.

A formidable posse of us decided to go to some highlife show at the house of the Director of World Bank for Ghana. Feeling like we would be considered “lower class”as students in a venue with dignitaries and whatnot, and knowing that I would never see any of these people again, I decided that I would take on an alias.

My name for the evening was Aziz Ibn-Amadi, and I was the nephew to the CEO of Emirates Airlines. I was in Ghana while my uncle was in Mali, looking to expand to more cities in West Africa.

We took advantage of the free alcohol and food, and enjoyed some excellent movement. I had some pretty ridiculous conversations with people as the heir to the CEO of Emirates. Many a-person asked for my contact information, to which I gave a fake email address.

After 4 glasses, I decided that it would be a good idea to approach the director, Mats Karllsson. He asked where I was from, to which I responded the United Arab Emirates. I thanked him for a lovely evening and hoped that I would return to Ghana soon.

All in all, a pretty ridiculous evening.

Hope everyone had a good week. Talk soon.

LDG