Captain’s sixes impress new US ambassador

First-time Kiwi experiences for new envoys. Tracy Watkins reports.

Flat whites, hongi and cricket – ask new United States ambassador Mark Gilbert and wife Nancy about their introduction to Kiwi culture and they are spilling over with new experiences.

Flat whites – a new find, and one Nancy loves; hongi – one of their earliest experiences on Kiwi soil was at the Treaty Grounds on Waitangi Day.

That, along with their early experience of the Maori culture, has left a deep impression on both of them.

‘‘We come home and talk about it,’’ said Nancy Gilbert.

‘‘It is more than what we envisioned and it’s beautiful and it’s special and important and it pierces you.’’

And of course, cricket – their first cricket experience was that game at Westpac Stadium in which Brendon McCullum belted a rally of sixes; what an introduction.

‘‘That was one of the most impressive displays that I have ever seen,’’ said ambassador Gilbert. ‘‘I was saying to Nancy: It’s Babe Ruth. It was something that was really, really incredible.’’

The baseball comparison is probably inevitable. Mark Gilbert, a former financier, has a unique claim to fame in his job: he is the first professional baseballer to serve his country as ambassador.

But the way he sees it, his background also makes him the ideal candidate.

Representing your country, leading an embassy, is like being on a team: it was all about leadership and mentoring, he said. It helps also if you can call the president a friend – something the Gilberts have done since they met a young politician by the name of Barack Obama 10 years ago.

The occasion was a small dinner party and neither he nor Nancy had known much about Obama before that night.

But they hit it off. Or, as Nancy Gilbert puts it: ‘‘It was a man crush.’’

‘‘We were so impressed,’’ said Mark Gilbert.

‘‘We walked out that night and said: in eight to 12 years he could possibly be the nominee. Little did we know he’d be running for president in less than a year and a half.’’

The friendship has endured. Dotted around the Gilberts’ new home in Lower Hutt are pictures of them with the president and his family. In one there is even a Kiwi link: as Obama and Gilbert pose for the camera, a poster of Crowded House fills the background.

The couple have backed their admiration for Obama with funding.

Gilbert is one of an elite group of backers known as ‘‘bundlers’’, the name given to people who tap friends in high places for cheques to boost a candidate and a party’s coffers.

Controversy over the number of Obama’s ‘‘bundlers’’ lined up for diplomatic posts caused a Senate filibuster that delayed some appointments. For the Gilberts, it meant two years in limbo.

The glossy picture books on the coffee table at the embassy tell the story of how they filled the time. Taken by Mark Gilbert, the pictures show the couple trekking around America.

‘‘Every time the Senate went on a recess, we got in a car and went to see another national park,’’ said Nancy Gilbert. ‘‘That’s what we did before we got here. Plus it gave us extra time to learn about New Zealand . . . so we could jump in with two feet. And we have not stopped for a second since we got here.’’

Some types of supermassive black holes shoot out jets of radiation including radio waves which can be detected by radio telescopes.

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