Travel Journal:

As a Postgrad in Edinburgh... - Baseball, International Style


Baseball, International Style 20/3/2008
 
It's that time again. Temperatures are rising, flowers are blooming, you can almost smell the beer and hotdogs... baseball season is here! Well, Spring Training, anyway. Opening Day is around the corner, but small games are played everyday. Jonmikel subscribed to MLB.com, so we keep on top of all the latest developments. The best one being the games played recently by the San Diego Padres and the LA Dodgers in Beijing. Well, the game was OK, but the announcers were hilarious. First of all, they didn't realize until half of the way through the game that they were being broadcast not only in San Diego but across the internet. So for most of the game, they made off-color but ultimately very funny remarks about the Chinese and their lack of understanding of baseball and how to film games and about cheerleaders and such. They were having a grand old time, and my guess is that they got a call from someone up above telling them to knock it off because people all over the world were listening to the broadcast, because they toned it down a notch and made a remark about people listening to them over the internet. It was all in good fun. And they had good points about the Chinese: the whole time, the camera was all over the place and never on the action, and never even on the right people in the dugout. It was a pretty bad video, but hilarious none-the-less. Like watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 for baseball.

Also, we actually saw a group of people playing a game of baseball out in Holyrood Park the other day. A bunch of 20-somethings, some with real baseball pants and gloves, some looking utterly confused at the mere concept of baseball. They were, as Laura put it, so cute. But there's something about people playing baseball, even poorly, on a sunny day in Spring that just makes me cheerful. They actually have a little mini-League in Edinburgh, something like 5 teams that play in Spring, and even have a real diamond somewhere in town. I can't imagine that it's popular with the locals, but jeez it's GOTTA be more fun to watch than cricket. As Raphael says in TMNT: You gotta understand waht a crumpet is before you understand cricket. And I have nothing to say about crumpets.
 
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