Take me out to the ball game

As I live in Singapore, very few if any people watch baseball, and I am part of the very locals who even have an remote interest in America's national pasttime. How I got interested in this game is similar in many ways to how some people fall in love. During one school holiday in sec 4 when I was bored out of my wits, I do what any self-respecting couch potato will do: endlessly, pointlessly flipping through the channels. With nothing else better to watch though, I ended up on espn, since sports seem like a better alternative to cheesy soap operas. And then I ended up watching a baseball game. Like what a typical Singaporean will feel, I was bored out of my wits by what seemed like a very slow game (nothing beats cricket though).

This game however left me quite fascinated though, as I was especially intrigued by the idea of the pitcher and the batter going mano-a-mano against each other. Despite the fact that it is a team game, there is the chance for player to shine as an individual, yet at the same time without teamwork there is no way the team will be able win. This is true of many types of sports games, but it seems particularly true in baseball. Witness the baseball teams with superstar players but was never able to truly break out.

What got me interested was the 2001 World Series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the New York Yankees. Everyone knows who the Yankees are, even though they don't have the slightest idea about baseball. The Yankees logo has become a cultural icon of sorts. So how intridued I was to see the D'backs beat the Yankees in what some called the greatest world series ever. There was late inning heroics, there was the eeriness of seeing the yankees come back in almost totally similar circumstances in back to back games, and the tremendous passion from the American fans who were still trying to recover from the shock of the September 11 attack. This lead me to study more about the game.

What I learned was that baseball is a game filled with so much history and passion that it seemed to have no equal. Though many would disagree with me, as many other sports have a rich tradition behind them, other games never really fire me up the way baseball does. Their fans can be such fanatics that almost every possible stat was compared and recorded in such meticulous fashion. It was also extremely interesting for me to see the lengths people will go to find totally useless but interesting facts from the stats. If only statistcs in school was this interesting.

Love cannot be easily expressed, and my words do not bear justice to the passion I have towards this game. I cannot say why I like it as much as I do, and I just hope I can keep on hearing this baseball song for the rest of my life:

" Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don't care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don't win it's a shame.
For it's one, two, three strikes, you're out,
At the old ball game."

Quote of the day

""No baseball fan has to explain his mania to any other baseball fan. They are a fraternity. It is less easy, often it is hopeless, to try to explain it to anyone else. You grow technical, and you do not make sense. You grow sentimental, and you are deemed soft in the head. How, the benighted outsider ask you with no little condescension, can you grow sentimental about a cold-blooded professional sport?"

- John K. Hutchens