Polo ponies are not pastel
Today I went to the San Diego Polo Club and saw my first-ever polo match --possibly my last, because I don't know if I'd have even thought of it before, let alone driven all the way out to a polo grounds, if it hadn't been an alumni event.
[Polo is fun!]
This was something I heard about through Cambridge in America. It was mostly an Ivy League event, but they also invited Oxford alums and oh yes, us. The most obvious and loudest were the people from Harvard, and someone said something about "John Harvard, who got a good thing started," and the guy sitting next to me said wryly that Harvard wouldn't have had anything to GET started without Cambridge (which is true.)
I was nervous about driving all the way down there, because I haven't done a solo drive anywhere that long in a good while. I also had no idea what to expect. I had no idea what to WEAR. I looked it up and it said "smart casual," and I have no clue what "smart casual" even IS, and then I looked again and it said "garden party," and I thought "oooooh. You should have said!" --because I know what to wear to a garden party. I thought I was overdoing the nerves a bit, then I realized that considering I've never been to a polo match before AND everyone there was a total stranger AND I had the feeling this was going to involve some serious class and money, it was understandable. I worried a bit about class and money and not knowing anyone and ponies and then I thought about this and laughed:
Call it a Rarity moment.
Anyway, I shouldn't have worried, because anything with horses, no matter how clean, involves dirt and horseshit SOMEWHERE and I got lost a few times, but then I got un-lost. (Seriously, country roads out there are weird. They suddenly change names and bend, so that while you are on the same road, you are now on a different road with a different name, and meanwhile the road you were supposed to be on branched off in a different direction. Makes NO sense at all.)
Turns out that polo is PRETTY DARNED COOL.
I guess if you were going to PLAY it, it would be ridiculously expensive, although there are actually neighborhood clubs in inner-cities giving kids a chance to do something other than hanging out on the streets. I know zap about polo, but that makes sense: I've seen it work that way with opera. Go somewhere with bright, talented kids and just give them a chance, and you turn out to have some awesome opera and ballet stars you never would have had and some kids with a whole new life. But if you're just going to WATCH it, you can pile some friends into a car and pack a picnic and tailgate for $10 apiece.
It's also fast and exciting and really easy to understand. Baseball has a billion statistics and God alone knows how cricket works. I've PLAYED cricket and had it explained a million times and I still don't get it. The standard gag explanation is this:
Cricket: As explained to a foreigner...
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!
(Basically, though, it's baseball with only one super long inning and instead of a field you have some sort of back and forth arrangement and people "bowl" balls and run back and forth and honestly, no, I don't get it either, but it is very long and can be very dull, although the men who try to explain it to you can be very charming.)
POLO, on the other hand, is just this:
There are two teams. There is one ball. Each team tries to get the ball into the opposing team's goal.
That's it. It's no different from soccer or hockey and a whole lot more understandable than American football.
What's different is that it's played at top speed by people racing around on horseback and leaning waaaay over to thwack the ball with a long bendy mallet, and the ball is lightweight so it can pop right into the air and only very good players can actually spike the ball while it's IN THE AIR and they are racing around under it in a scrum of galloping horses only that is what one player did ZOMG. They can whack the ball backwards, too, so it looks as though a golfer was aiming off the tee and decided "April Fool's, I'm going to drive backwards to the last tee instead." They don't even seem to be looking at the freaking thing.
Players are handicapped like golfers from -2 to 10. A 10 would be Viktor Krum level good (there's less than a dozen in the world) and -2 would be Neville or Hermione. It's like if you have Neville on your team, it's like giving the other team two free goals, so the handicap is to even everything up. This was two almost perfectly balanced teams.
The other thing is that each inning, or "chukka," only lasts seven and a half minutes. I have no idea how they came up with that number, but it's only seven and a half minutes, and they are not doing that "seven and a half minutes! Nah. . . we're stopping the clock, so it's really going to take half an hour instead" that drives me nuts in football. They really just about never stop the clock in polo. The first team I saw was only pretty good, but the REAL match was unbelievably fast and exciting, and if you think you're going to get bored, it's all over in a few minutes and then they have to stop for a while so they can change horses. They have to have a new horse every chukka so the horse doesn't get tired out, so there's a little pause so you can eat something or whatever. That's also where the $$$ factor comes in, because you have to have four, six, or maybe more horses to play for each player in one match. With four players on a side, that's 24 horses, all of which are expensive (plus I bet they break a lot of mallets and stuff.) Still, it looks like the families who are members of the polo club all take up the sport when they can barely walk and probably use the family's older horses or something, and people also go out and take classes without owning their own horses just for fun, so it doesn't have to be only for super-rich people.
Anyway, with seven and a half minutes and six chukkers and a few pauses between each, you can play two games in three or four hours. So it is fast. Also, I guess it's traditional during the halftime break for the crowd to go out on the field and stomp down the divots.
This game was a memorial cup, and I didn't realize till it was over that the home team was related to the memorial cup honoree and the guy who got the final goal was the honoree's brother in law and had his mom and his 101 year old grandma and the whole family there. It was neck and neck the whole time and it finally went into overtime and there was a lot of racing around and THWACK! I am not a sporty person, but even I got it.
You can see polo videos on YouTube, but it's nowhere near as exciting as being there. So if I do go back, I will bring people so they can be there too.
[Polo is fun!]
This was something I heard about through Cambridge in America. It was mostly an Ivy League event, but they also invited Oxford alums and oh yes, us. The most obvious and loudest were the people from Harvard, and someone said something about "John Harvard, who got a good thing started," and the guy sitting next to me said wryly that Harvard wouldn't have had anything to GET started without Cambridge (which is true.)
I was nervous about driving all the way down there, because I haven't done a solo drive anywhere that long in a good while. I also had no idea what to expect. I had no idea what to WEAR. I looked it up and it said "smart casual," and I have no clue what "smart casual" even IS, and then I looked again and it said "garden party," and I thought "oooooh. You should have said!" --because I know what to wear to a garden party. I thought I was overdoing the nerves a bit, then I realized that considering I've never been to a polo match before AND everyone there was a total stranger AND I had the feeling this was going to involve some serious class and money, it was understandable. I worried a bit about class and money and not knowing anyone and ponies and then I thought about this and laughed:
Click to viewCall it a Rarity moment.
Anyway, I shouldn't have worried, because anything with horses, no matter how clean, involves dirt and horseshit SOMEWHERE and I got lost a few times, but then I got un-lost. (Seriously, country roads out there are weird. They suddenly change names and bend, so that while you are on the same road, you are now on a different road with a different name, and meanwhile the road you were supposed to be on branched off in a different direction. Makes NO sense at all.)
Turns out that polo is PRETTY DARNED COOL.
I guess if you were going to PLAY it, it would be ridiculously expensive, although there are actually neighborhood clubs in inner-cities giving kids a chance to do something other than hanging out on the streets. I know zap about polo, but that makes sense: I've seen it work that way with opera. Go somewhere with bright, talented kids and just give them a chance, and you turn out to have some awesome opera and ballet stars you never would have had and some kids with a whole new life. But if you're just going to WATCH it, you can pile some friends into a car and pack a picnic and tailgate for $10 apiece.
It's also fast and exciting and really easy to understand. Baseball has a billion statistics and God alone knows how cricket works. I've PLAYED cricket and had it explained a million times and I still don't get it. The standard gag explanation is this:
Cricket: As explained to a foreigner...
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!
(Basically, though, it's baseball with only one super long inning and instead of a field you have some sort of back and forth arrangement and people "bowl" balls and run back and forth and honestly, no, I don't get it either, but it is very long and can be very dull, although the men who try to explain it to you can be very charming.)
POLO, on the other hand, is just this:
There are two teams. There is one ball. Each team tries to get the ball into the opposing team's goal.
That's it. It's no different from soccer or hockey and a whole lot more understandable than American football.
What's different is that it's played at top speed by people racing around on horseback and leaning waaaay over to thwack the ball with a long bendy mallet, and the ball is lightweight so it can pop right into the air and only very good players can actually spike the ball while it's IN THE AIR and they are racing around under it in a scrum of galloping horses only that is what one player did ZOMG. They can whack the ball backwards, too, so it looks as though a golfer was aiming off the tee and decided "April Fool's, I'm going to drive backwards to the last tee instead." They don't even seem to be looking at the freaking thing.
Players are handicapped like golfers from -2 to 10. A 10 would be Viktor Krum level good (there's less than a dozen in the world) and -2 would be Neville or Hermione. It's like if you have Neville on your team, it's like giving the other team two free goals, so the handicap is to even everything up. This was two almost perfectly balanced teams.
The other thing is that each inning, or "chukka," only lasts seven and a half minutes. I have no idea how they came up with that number, but it's only seven and a half minutes, and they are not doing that "seven and a half minutes! Nah. . . we're stopping the clock, so it's really going to take half an hour instead" that drives me nuts in football. They really just about never stop the clock in polo. The first team I saw was only pretty good, but the REAL match was unbelievably fast and exciting, and if you think you're going to get bored, it's all over in a few minutes and then they have to stop for a while so they can change horses. They have to have a new horse every chukka so the horse doesn't get tired out, so there's a little pause so you can eat something or whatever. That's also where the $$$ factor comes in, because you have to have four, six, or maybe more horses to play for each player in one match. With four players on a side, that's 24 horses, all of which are expensive (plus I bet they break a lot of mallets and stuff.) Still, it looks like the families who are members of the polo club all take up the sport when they can barely walk and probably use the family's older horses or something, and people also go out and take classes without owning their own horses just for fun, so it doesn't have to be only for super-rich people.
Anyway, with seven and a half minutes and six chukkers and a few pauses between each, you can play two games in three or four hours. So it is fast. Also, I guess it's traditional during the halftime break for the crowd to go out on the field and stomp down the divots.
This game was a memorial cup, and I didn't realize till it was over that the home team was related to the memorial cup honoree and the guy who got the final goal was the honoree's brother in law and had his mom and his 101 year old grandma and the whole family there. It was neck and neck the whole time and it finally went into overtime and there was a lot of racing around and THWACK! I am not a sporty person, but even I got it.
You can see polo videos on YouTube, but it's nowhere near as exciting as being there. So if I do go back, I will bring people so they can be there too.