And don't get me started on that "baskets" ball...

A fine blog entry at the Guardian is worth your attention. The gist: Regent's Park ain't big enough for soccer and baseball, and those damned colonists think they own the place!

A few points on this...

1) A friend of the blog is an American ex-pat in London and actually plays in one of the softball leagues in Regent's Park. He said he's never noticed tension between the footballers and the drunken lout softball players. That doesn't mean that those witty Englishmen weren't slamming him with superfluous-U laden humour so dry it is missed.

2) First comment worth noting: "Quality article mind. Though not enough stress was placed on just how harmful Budweiser is ... i.e. it's drunk by white shirt crap tie morons with no soul and it bears a resembalance in taste and consistency as to what one might suppose oxygenated piss tastes like." I'm unsure if I want to applaud and go pound 15 Boddingtons or if I want to dump 1,000 cases of Bass into Boston Harbor (making both taste better!) in protest. OK, the former.

3) Second comment worth noting: "Maybe the hurlers and camogie players should take over this park, I'm sure both softball and football players would think twice before confronting a bunch of stick wielding crazed Irishmen." +1.

4) Another notable effect in the comments: how some of the commenters discuss "frisbee tossers", but where "tosser" does not mean the act of throwing the frisbee, but rather the delightful English slur.

5) Were I to take the column seriously, I'd wonder if this is a reaction to the (however downplayed) success of Americans in the Premiership, whilst Englishmen appear nowhere in American sports, for the most part. Marcus Hahnemann has been among the top keepers in England all year (he'd topped the Actim stats for several months until Van Der Sar passed him last week). Several others have made names for themselves (Convey, Spector, McBride, Bocanegra, DeMerit, Friedel, Howard, Gibbs, with Dempsey, Onyewu and Beasley to come). And who is the only Englishman who has made any sporting news in America? John Amaechi. Seems to me that the English have a right to be a little sensitive about their sporting prowess.