SNIPPET: Terry GEORGE is a filmmaker from Northern Ireland who was living in NY in 1997. His latest film was "Some Mother's Son." Per Terry -- "Until I came to America, I was not a great fan of spectator sports. This was probably because I grew up in Belfast, where my choices were extremely limited. Watching soccer was dangerous, tribal, and sectarian, while Gaelic football and hurling branded you a nationalist in the eyes of the forces of law and order. When I first came to America I associated the sight of a man hurling a small leather ball and another trying to hit it with that boring, snobbish, polite, lily-white game called cricket, the only sport in the world where the players break for tea. So I was, you might say, not favorably disposed to the game of baseball. My first encounter with baseball took place in a New York bar. It was a warm summer afternoon. A friend was late, so I watched the afternoon broadcast to combat the loneliness that overcomes a solo d! > rinker. Baseball seemed slow like cricket. It seemed to go on forever, > like cricket. But there were small clues that something was different > here. The players wore outlandishly colored clothes. Very American. In > the tradition of those American tourists with their black-and-white > checked polyester pants and barn-door-size Bermuda shorts. My attention > was captured. The guy with the bat swung it dangerously; the other guy > threw the ball with the passion of a bogside rioter. And when they were > waiting for the next terrifying exchange, both men looked as thought they > had taken to chewing a spare ball to exercise their jaws. Then the > thrower spat! The batter spat! And the man behind him in the blazer and > chest plate lifted up his mask and he spat! God Almightly, this wasn't > cricket. By the end of the game I was completely baffled. The batter's > objective was obvious: to hit the ball out of the field. But what was > the thrower aiming at? Why did all these numbers ke! > ep flashing on to the screen? And why was the drunk next to me talking > like a nuclear physicist? 'Well, eh, Mattingly has forty RBIs and he's > batting three-oh-five, but today he's oh for four.' A few weeks later I got the chance to go to a game at Shea Stadium. On the subway ride to the stadium I conjured up memories of my other brushes with spectator sports. There was the soccer memory, where I was sandwiched somewhere in the middle of ten thousand screaming savages hell-bent on killing a crowd of equal size at the other end of the pitch. In the middle of this lunacy, a soccer game was in progress ... Then there was my Gaelic football memory, where I stood, freezing, at the edge of a wind-swept rain-lashed cow field in the middle of rural Ireland as thirty brave men in shirts and T-shirts slid through cow pats and mud pools for the glory of their town or village. It was a warm summer night when we reached Shea, so there was little chance of Gaelic football-induced pneumonia. But as the crowds poured from the subway I began to get that old soccer hooligan phobia, and the awesome size of Shea Stadium did nothing to alleviate it. We climbed to the third tier, where I was confronted by a strange and wonderful sight. There were seats. Seats everywhere. Better still, the people were sitting them; ordinary people, not skinhead armies but groups of friends, couples, even families with young kids kitted out in their team colors. An attendant showed me to the seat. He wiped it! That night Shea seemed to buzz with good-humored expectation. It felt like some sort of giant outdoor cinema before a good movie. Vendors passed by selling food, soft drinks and beer. Beer! Are they crazy! Okay, the atmosphere was very laid-back, but this was really pushing it. As the sun set, my friend Johnny HAMILL and I sipped our plastic containers of Bud and he explained the rudiments of the game while the loudspeakers belted out SPRINGSTEEN's 'Born in the USA.' 'The pitcher has to get the ball past the batter, but it must be inside the strike zone, ' he explained. 'What decides if it's in?" I asked. 'The umpire.' 'But there's no proof, ' I said. 'The ball doesn't known anything down. It doesn't stay in any net.' 'The umpire decides,' HAMILL declared matter-of factly. What an awful job, I thought. Can you imagine a referee having to make such a call in a soccer match? 'Sorry, England, that ball was just wide of the imaginary goal area.' You could bury the remains of the poor man in a cigarette box. As the game progressed and the lights of Queens twinkled in the distance, I learned about double plays, earned run averages, about stealing a base. I watched Mookie WILSON hit a home run into the stands, watched the ball disappear into a forest of outstretched arms. In the middle of the seventh inning we all stood up and sang ... about peanuts and Cracker Jack and taking me out to the ballpark ... Johnny HAMILL explained how his father, Billy, a Belfast émigré, had grown to love baseball. Irish imagination and baseball grew up together, he said. The history of the game was woven with great Irish names: John McGRAW, Connie MACK, the accursed Walter O'MALLEY who took the Dodgers from Brooklyn. The Mets won in the ninth and as I watched the fans - couples, families, friends - leave the stadium, I realized that baseball was not about tribal warfare or about sport as penance; it was about entertainment. People went to a ball game to enjoy themselves. I had certainly enjoyed myself. As I began to follow the game, I learned more about hit-and-run, curve balls, and balks. Back then I liked the Mets because they were underdogs and the Irish always side with the underdog. In 1986, the Mets took me through a World Series that was as exciting a sports event as I ever saw. I was a complete convert ..." Excerpts, "The Irish In America," Coffey & Golway (Hyperion/NY 1997).