It's Like Cricket, Only It Makes Sense

Greetings from London!

London turns out to be very nice. It's got marvelous, monumental governmental architecture everywhere, which I assume reflects a greater acceptance of state power than would have flown when our own country was building edifices, but that's another blog. (And a pretty dull one, too.) Though speaking of government, for better or for worse there's a lot more of it here than most of us are used to — sex shops (Soho's main drag for CD shopping also turns out to be the boulevard of peep shows and porny DVDs and what-not) all note that they're licensed, the vinegar for my fish and chips (sans “mushy peas”) carried an incomprehensible, legalistic notice declaring it to be a “non-brewed condiment,” and everywhere you go there's evidence that an entire class of civil servants spends all day thinking of how exactly you should line up, where you should drive and what should happen to you if you don't do things that way. (I don't want to know what the duties of a British sex-shop inspector entail.) And there's an aura of default politeness that's really strange for a New Yorker — in London construction signs say things like “We Are Sorry for Any Inconvenience,” while back home all you get is ESCALATOR CLOSED FOR REPAIR UNTIL [DATE THAT'S NOW EIGHT MONTHS PAST.]

This is a pretty awesome city, one that's fun and really seems to work. There's tons to do and see, uniformed folks everywhere sweeping and fixing, and the (incessant) announcements in the train stations can be easily understood. Though today it was sunny and 75 — I wonder if I'll like it as well when it's clammy.

Walking around today (on three hours of sleep, wheee!) I saw the occasional Yankee cap as totem of Americana and passed a random store on Oxford Street that had an assortment of baseball caps — Yankees, White Sox, Pirates and Cardinals. But I did see something else that felt familiar, even if there was no baseball involved. Around noontime, every pub I walked by had a gaggle of guys in soccer jerseys outside, drinking pints and shifting their feet and looking fidgety. The here-but-not-really-here look of fans who are antsy for the game to hurry up and start already is universal.

And then the Eureka moment. At Trafalgar Square, I spotted a familiar shade of blue by the massive plinth from which Admiral Nelson stares down at the city. Could it be? It was — a faux Mets shirt, with a very welcome WRIGHT 5 on the back. The Mets may be having their problems with the Phillies, but they're on the board in London.

(By the way, so far this game sucks as much on MLB.TV at 7 p.m. in London as I imagine it does on old-fashioned TV at 2 p.m. in New York. Come ON, for Chrissakes.)