I’ve finally found the sport that I am most suited to play. Baseball. It’s perfect for me. Baseballers are overweight, chew gum, spit and curse, actually play for about 10 minutes out of a 4 hour game, have less skill than any other game and get paid stupid amounts of money. In my next life I want to be a MLB player.
But being a spectator is something else. You sit in a concrete arena in 3◦ cold for 4 hours, pay exorbitant prices for weak beer and cold hamburgers and applaud if an innings finishes with a solitary run. After a whole game maybe 5 runs have been scored. And that’s a good game.
On the positive side, there is a real camaraderie between the spectators. Sitting next to us were a couple of scruffy brothers from Virginia, who made a weekend of it by driving 8 hours North, saw 2 games 2 days in a row and then were intending to drive 8 hours back home. Behind us a very nice family, Mum with diamond rings on her fingers and a posh accent and their young adult boys talking about Yale and Harvard. Us Israelis, the classy Bostonians and the scruffy Virginians all got on as if we were all long lost relatives. A real equalizing melting pot. At least it distracted us from the dreadful game.
I am a self admitted snob when it comes to bat and ball sports. I love cricket to the point of it almost being a religion. My honest view is that it is chess with a bat and ball and that no other sport demands the mix of tactics, skill, timing, courage and hand-eye coordination as cricket does. Similarly, I have always looked down my nose at baseball as a moron’s version of my beloved cricket. I came to the game with an open mind, willing, or even hoping to be proven wrong. Unfortunately, I saw nothing that changed my view. I know I am running the risk that my American family, who has always treated me unequivocally as one of them, will disown me, but I have to call it as I see it.
If that isn’t enough, the skill level of “athletes” who are paid for one season more than what I will earn in my entire life time, is deplorable. Granted, batsmen have to try to hit a very hard ball travelling at them at almost 100 mph speed with a relatively thin piece of wood. That does take some skill. But the amount of fielding mishaps, dropped catches and lack of effort would put an under 12’s cricket team to shame.
All this is actually irrelevant. The chance of seeing a baseball game with Gal, my oldest son, who I see so rarely these days as he lives so far away, is one that made all my reservations slide in to insignificance. There is nothing in the whole world that I would have rather done on this Sunday afternoon than being at Fenway with Gal.
And I will finish with some words of contrition. At this particular game of the Boston Red Sox and Miami Stingrays, I learned a humbling lesson as a testimony to my hubris. After 7 innings, where the Red Sox were more hopeless than their opponents and were deservedly losing 6 runs to 2, Gal and I left. In our absence, the ‘Sox decided to pull their fingers out, scored 6 runs in the bottom of the 8th and won 8-2. There’s a lesson to be learnt here. In a game as low scoring as baseball, it’s never over till it’s over. Who’s the stupid one, then?
