Hole in my Sox

It looks like I really am going to have to push on with finishing this sitcom if fame is to be mine (and Ben's) and fortune is to be Jamie's before he starts school.

Regular readers (I do have some, honest) will know that Ben sent me his version of my original pilot script a couple of weeks ago. I have since been through it and he's done a great job but there's still a lot of work to do before anyone important is allowed to read it. However, we'll put the time in and see where we go. But a rather disappointing discovery earlier today has just upped the pressure.

As well as the sitcom and another idea for a one-off comedy drama, I had a big plan for a book which (needless to say) I hadn't quite managed to get round to doing anything about. And it may now be too late.

As briefly as I can, almost six years ago and just a few weeks before Vanessa and I moved from London to Yorkshire, the Ulster Unionist Party sent me to Harvard University in Boston for a "leadership" course which was also attended by representatives from each of the other major political parties in the UK and Ireland.

It was an incredible seven days which I'll always cherish. But, leaving the politics to one side, the highlight for me was a visit to Fenway Park baseball stadium to watch the Boston Red Sox take on the Toronto Blue Jays. I had seen a fair bit of baseball on TV prior to this but, like most people, regarded it as little more than jazzed up rounders.

After asking other course attendees if they wanted to come with me - they all said no, which was good for my confidence - I turned up on my own and managed to blag a standing-room-only ticket (an Ulster accent can be a very useful tool in Boston). I spent the next five-and-a-half hours standing in my tiny bit of room, directly behind an old timer who was sat down with his pals.

They were all retired, all baseball nuts and on a fortnight-long trip watching baseball at various locations on the east coast of America. He very politely asked me who I was and what I was doing at the game. After hearing I worked in the House of Commons, he declared his huge admiration for the British Parliament (he was an American, don't forget) and Tony Blair. So I recounted all I knew about Westminster and our then Prime Minister and he told me as much as he could squeeze into five-and-a-half hours about baseball. I left the ground completely taken by the game and, since then, have become hooked and a full-on Boston Red Sox fan complete with my own replica shirt.

Most bizarrely for me, though, was that word of my trip spread amongst the handful of Harvard professors who were teaching us during our week in Boston. Several times, in advance of lectures, a professor would request whoever had gone to Fenway to identify himself, then he'd ask me what I thought of the game and then he'd tell me how much he loved "those Sox." These individuals' heads housed some of the largest brains on the planet, yet they were all addicted to baseball and their local team. I found that fascinating, although I understood it a bit better when I read about the history of the Boston Red Sox some time afterwards.

Fast forwarding three years and being very bored in my job, I thought it would be a wonderful idea to try to persuade some kindly publisher to let me write a baseball-themed travel book (OK, so I'm a dreamer) which would begin with a greatly expanded (and much more colourful) version of the above story. The rest would centre on me travelling to America two or three times (probably on the wing) to do interviews including with some of the Harvard professors I met in 2003, attend a handful of games and meet some oh-so-hilarious baseball-type characters. And, whilst it would obviously be a great chore for me, I would selflessly put myself through it in the name of educating and hopefully entertaining my readers (please don't applaud).

I even bought myself a publication on Amazon which told me how to write a proper book proposal. Earlier this year, I actually set myself a deadline of the end of the summer to submit it. But a big spanner has just been chucked in the works. My old school friend Colin Andrews first alerted me to it when I was in Edinburgh for the rugby last month and I've only just got round to checking out the damage.

Here's what it said on the web about the first episode of a recently broadcast Radio 4 production entitled, Baseball and Me:

"Historian and baseball aficionado Simon Schama is presenting a two-part programme on BBC Radio 4 to reflect on why he, as an Englishman, is so fascinated by the American game that the British often dismiss as 'grown-up rounders.' The programme is called Baseball and Me, and the first episode will be broadcast this Saturday, March 7, from 10.30-11.00 am. Simon Schama’s adopted team is the Boston Red Sox, and he recounts that from the moment he saw the floodlit green of the Fenway Park turf and the theatrical attire of the Boston Red Sox, he was smitten. Before then, cricket had been his sport but, all too quickly, wickets became bases and bowlers became pitchers. In Saturday’s programme, Schama gains behind-the-scenes access to his Red Sox heroes, the locker-room, the scoreboard operator and, most importantly, the man who sells the famous Fenway Frank hotdog."

Sadly, methinks my baseball horse has bolted.

UPDATE: I've just stumbled across the following review of the programme on The Times website:

"On Saturday Simon Schama had the chance to perform a great service for this country. Baseball and Me (Radio 4) could have been the half-hour in which the telegenic historian opened up a wonderful game to his trillions of fans; instead, he spent way too much time talking about himself."

Hmmm. Maybe I'm back in the ball game. Or, more likely, perhaps I'm just an idiot.