Enjoying some Cross words while catching up at the ballgame
Plastic pint glasses of beer topple over and hot dog wrappers float off towards LaGuardia Airport as the home team’s batting line-up is name-checked ahead of their game against the Houston Astros.
It’s a strange setting for two Corkonians to be chatting about the current form of Cork City but it’s as good a place as any to catch up with an acquaintance from home. Now that I think back on it, it’s an appropriately chaotic atmosphere in which to shoot the breeze about the League of Ireland.
The man accompanying me to the ball game is Éanna Buckley, an old friend from our days supporting City. Not long after he landed a job as the press officer of the club he loved, I began to cover the team for this newspaper. We both crossed a line, forever losing the innocence with which we used to roar on the team.
Here we were, all of a sudden pitted as opponents in the media game. He only wanted me to know information that suited the club and I no longer believed a word that came out of his mouth.
But the hostility was all boringly professional and never cause for a real fallout. And during the long, drawn-out collapse of the club that paid his wages, we spoke more often than ever, trying to get our heads around the chaos.
Éanna was at the centre of an unyielding storm that dominated the minds of City supporters for the best part of two years. While forced to push the official line on behalf of the successive owners who were slowly destroying a club that had hit the heights of league success in 2005, deep down he seethed with anger and dread.
As the grim outlook for the players led bulletins and sports pages, the misery inflicted upon the backroom staff never got much attention. But, as we strolled towards the right field section of the Citi Field stands, he explained to me how he could never walk away. Not even when he went without pay, not even when the club disintegrated in the High Courts just over a year ago. He looked forward to a new fan-owned club and rowed in alongside the fledgling board.
He owed it to himself to stick with it.
As first pitch approached, we walked past more food stands and reminisced about a Europa League trip to Finland in the summer of 2008. The first rumours had been surfacing that week as City headed into a second leg against FC Haka but nothing was clear. The uncertainty obviously didn’t help the players who, playing as a shadow of their better-funded selves succumbed to a 4-0 trouncing.
But it was so much worse behind the scenes. What none of us knew back then — and what I’m hearing for the first time from Éanna in New York city nearly three years later — was that a dispute with the hotel where the players (and media) were staying threatened to disrupt the team’s departure to the stadium with a bill still to be settled.
At the centre of the dispute was food that had been prepared in advance for the post-match trip to the airport. It was left to Éanna and a fellow employee to foot the bill and the pair were forced to sweat over their respective bank balances as they cobbled together the cash at an ATM.
They were subsequently reimbursed but listening to this against the backdrop of Mets fans all around us gorging on fast food made for an ironic counterpoint.
Baseball’s most eccentric outfit have had their off-field problems too. It emerged in recent months that the ballclub’s owners, the Milpon family, had been heavily caught up in their good friend Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme. Fred Milpon faces the potential of a billion-dollar lawsuit as the victims of Madoff’s fraud look for their pound of flesh. Meanwhile, as the financial burden closes in around them, the prospect of being forced to sell 25% of their prized assets lingers. By the time we take our seats near third base, I ask about how things are going in the simpler surroundings of Turner’s Cross. It’s all very well keeping up with Twitter updates but what’s the feeling on the ground?
Life in the First Division is tough and Buckley’s job is all the tougher for it. Promotion to the top flight is a necessity but a realistic possibility. A level of stability has been reached under the guidance of FORAS and league attendances haven’t dipped beneath 2,000 this season. In between league gossip, we chat about the rules of baseball, its history and quirks. We wonder which of the crowd-pleasing gimmicks standard to live US sport could be transported to Turner’s Cross. We conclude none would survive. And as we watch the Amazing Mets crack a losing streak in emphatic style, we realise that anything is possible in sport — no matter how low you’ve been.
Éanna hasn’t changed. He tries to con me into believing he’s not sure he’ll make it to Monday’s League Cup trip to Wexford because he will have landed in Shannon with hours to spare. I know him better. Despite all he’s been through, he can never bring himself to miss a game.
* Contact: john.w.riordan@gmail.com; Twitter: JohnWRiordan
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