The Houston Astros baseball team were well on the way to beating the Cleveland Guardians on Friday night when the soccer culture came barrelling in on the occasion, bare-chested and loud.
A group of 50 soccer fans started twirling replica shirts above their heads and chanting ‘USA’ at the back of the top tier stand, to the bemusement of a local crowd – some of whom did not seem to know that the World Cup hosts had progressed to the knock-out rounds a few hours earlier.
This hijacking of baseball did not seem to affront anyone and some Astros fans turned around to take pictures of the spectacle. But a security guard, Jon, decided after some time to take corrective action, stepping up towards the sea of exposed torsos. This didn’t go as planned. ‘Shirt off,’ the soccer boys urged him. He reluctantly left.
The scene at the Astros’ Daikin Park encapsulated the cultural divide between soccer and baseball, a sport so baked into American life that it will be hard for any upstart to wrestle attention and money away. Houston is a World Cup host city, yet the tournament might have been taking place on a different planet, judging by the absolute absence of any reference to it in the stadium on Friday.
‘Which sport?’ asked Steve, one of the attendants serving up hot dogs and beer, when asked if he’d watched the USA game earlier in the afternoon. ‘Soccer? Who did US play?’
Lindsey, watching the Astros with her husband and their three children had watched the USA game on TV – ‘two zero!’ – and Blake, a museum set creator at the game with his wife Rachel, here in the so-called US ‘Space City’, was not averse to the sport or its fans. ‘It’s good. They’re just having fun,’ he said of the chanting.
Baseball still rules the roost in Houston among USA fans despite it being a World Cup host city
It is Mexico’s fans bringing the noise in Houston thanks to its large Hispanic community
Baseball’s homely, apple pie American culture, so evident on Friday, was a far remove from the sound and fury of soccer. ‘Please remove your caps for our national anthem,’ the crowd was asked. They delighted in the ‘military welcome’ for two servicemen present – one of them a Captain Robin Hood – and in a man in a pinny tasked to raise the decibel level. They adored Jose Altuve, the superstar batter, who scored a home run. Altuve, the Venezuelan-born second baseman, is paid $33million a year by the Astros. Christian Pulisic, the soccer captain depicted on a recent US Time magazine cover as ‘Captain American’ is paid $6million a year by AC Milan.
For World Cup soccer mania, you needed to have been here on Thursday night when people in green replica tops were running down Smith St to reach bars in time for Mexico’s kick-off against South Korea, and flooding out of the FIFA fan zone into the tram stops a few hours later.
‘It was fantastic. It was a beautiful thing,’ said Maria, who work at the Whitehall hotel a half mile away and was one of the thousands at the fan zone. She is an American Hispanic and is supporting Mexico, not the USA. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the greater part of Houston shares her allegiance, owing to the huge Hispanic communities – 44 percent of the city’s population – which settled to work in the energy and construction business, relatively close to the Mexico border.
In the American media this week, a young Mexican fan related how she was wearing one of her father’s replica jerseys. ‘It’s 30 years old. Like, the same age I am,’ she explained. ‘It’s definitely inculcated into the culture here. You can definitely feel it,’ another said of the passion for the Mexican team which the tournament has been bringing out. ‘Mexico gave us more memories than the US.’
When the USA faced Australia, the level of support at Houston’s FIFA fan zone was simply not the same. As the first half played out, many were queuing for a skills game pitching players against a virtual David Beckham. More waited in line to visit a replica of Houston’s NASA Space Station.
It was not a tide of USA jerseys, but a pastiche of nation’s colours: Sweden, Argentina, Netherlands, Colombia and France shirts. A World Cup mechanise seller, Randy Lansley, said he’d sold as many Dutch T-shirts as USA, as half time approached. (The Dutch were arriving in numbers ahead of their match against the Swedes on Saturday.)
Maurico Pochettino’s United States Men’s National Team have enjoyed a superb start
There was not a tide of USA kits in the designated fanzones, but a pastiche of nation’s colours
The Astros gave the US men’s national team a run for their money, with two home runs from Jeremy Pena sending the crowd into a state of delirium. A local firm, Pluckers Wing Bar, was offering five free chicken wings for every fan if any Astros players stole a base. An Astro did steal a base. Each Astros home run sent a cannon firing off and the iconic Home Run Train rolling down the tracks on the upper left-field wall. It was madness – a happy kind of madness, free of the naked anger and histrionics that soccer can bring. ‘All that falling over and all those angry guys. You don’t get that here,’ said a woman in the ketchup queue, when approached about the World Cup, though she knew the US had won.
Would the USA lifting the World Cup start to shift the balance of power towards soccer and away from baseball, we asked Blake, who was sporting a ‘Terry Black’s Barbecue, Dallas’ cap. He laughed. ‘Not really, he said. That was just before the soccer crew put their tops back on and left. The Astros won 9-3. Fireworks sounded across the city.
