Word: cricket
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...kind of quest, simply one tweaked with technology. In Asia, fathers and grandfathers still tell of growing up in the midst of World War II, of nights of not knowing what to do with yourself except sneak into the tall grass of the countryside to catch crickets, then take them home, cupped in your hand, to raise in the dark of matchboxes, training the insects for fights with the crickets of other boys who have been on the same nocturnal hunt. The more experience each cricket has had, the better a fighter it becomes--the tiny surrogate...
From bullets to balls From gats [guns] to bats From streets of concrete To grass and mats We're playin' cricket...
...friend of mine asked if I wanted to play cricket," says Steve Aranda, 19, a hard-core gang member at the time. "I got a dictionary to look up what it was." Aranda, who once watched a gunned-down friend die in his arms, says the punks tease him about this sissy cricket thing. "But this will take me places they'll never go." Former gang member Robert Saxton, 16, thinks of it as switching crews. "This is my gang now," says Saxton, shagging balls at practice...
Hayes runs the Homies & Popz through a tight workout spiked with lectures on focus, attitude and respect. He leads a boot-camp jog, yelling out "Compton Cricket!" as they answer "U.S.A.!" For Hayes, the highlight of the trip to Britain was having young men "who grew up in all this violence" preach the gospel of peace to Adams and the wannabe gangsters of Belfast, who were planning a tribute to the violent rapper Tupac Shakur (gunned down in Las Vegas in 1996) until the homies told them that ain't cool. One of their ex-teammates is doing hard time...
...politely, hiding your skepticism, when Hayes rhapsodizes about his vision of cricket sweeping across America and rescuing inner-city kids. But you find yourself silently cheering when he trots his team out to a Sunday match in the San Fernando Valley against the Mayflower Club, a team of British expatriates with names like Winston and Trevor. "Thoroughly sporting group of lads," observes Clifford Severn, 74, who has been playing cricket since 1933 and is by far the oldest member of the Mayflower Club. Trevor Roper, 47, captain of the Mayflower Club, says he and his British mates "weren't used...