God Exists. QED.
Possibly over the top but this is baseball so you never really know. There’s something about the game that speaks deep to the American soul. Other countries have sports, certainly, certain people within those countries might be nuts for one sport or another. But there’s some mythos about baseball and being an American.
Different from and possibly deeper than Kiwis and All Blacks even. Even, even they, Kiwis don’t mythologise the first time Dad tackles son, but Pop and Jr trying out the child sized glove with a bit of catch is as much a rite of passage as realising that Mom’s apple pie actually stinks.
Having taken years to watch Field of Dreams, the first time, I was hooked. I then went about finding every Video I could on Baseball, and was pleased to discover there was not a bad one among them. Tim, you are right about it speaking to the American soul. No idea why, though.
Baseball? It’s just not cricket.
They last won the year the Model T came out….
Which came first – baseball or rounders?
One of Miss Austin’s novels refers to a game of baseball.
Fucking Cubs.
There’s something about the game that speaks deep to the American soul. Other countries have sports, certainly, certain people within those countries might be nuts for one sport or another. But there’s some mythos about baseball and being an American.
There really isn’t. At least not for 40+ decades. Its long been (American) football that’s been the dominant sport – culturally as well as monetarily – here. And American football is at least as American as baseball or basketball.
That’s not to say that there aren’t places where baseball dominates, but for the country as a whole, baseball is part of a fictional, idealized, never-actually-existed, national history.
for the country as a whole, baseball is part of a fictional, idealized, never-actually-existed, national history.
Yes, and that’s exactly the point. It is part of the myth of Americanness. Like the frontier and the pioneers and the wide open spaces, which also ain’t exactly something that today’s Americans are familiar with.
Speaking as a European who lives in the US (a Frenchman, if you must know. Spare me the boos), I admit to enjoying baseball, even though it certainly isn’t something I’m very familiar with. Or even fully understand. But there’s something deeply satisfying about sitting in the bleachers of a summer afternoon and watching a leisurely game unfold on the diamond and hearing the crack of the bat against the ball and being suddenly on the edge of your seat because it could just be a home run and then you sit back and take a sip of your beer because an outfielder caught it and you’re back to the leisurely pace that prevailed before the ephemeral event that had in it the possibility that something was actually going to happen.
It’s what summer afternoons are for.
!But there’s something deeply satisfying about sitting in the bleachers of a summer afternoon and watching a leisurely game unfold on the diamond and hearing the crack of the bat against the ball and being suddenly on the edge of your seat because it could just be a
home runsix and then you sit back and take a sip of your beer because an outfielder caught it and you’re back to the leisurely pace that prevailed before the ephemeral event that had in it the possibility that something was actually going to happen.It’s what summer afternoons are for.”
FYP
I find baseball a powerful soporific. But it’s amazing how many Yanks are just fucking autistic trainspotters about it. I mean, I am a huge geek and have a wealth of useless bullshit stashed away, but knowing, off the top of your head, who was the St Louis Cardinals’ Third Baseman in the 1937 season is just weird. And don’t get me started on Sabermetrics…