Sorry, we got another new PM between posts
Can see where you’re coming from. In a paradoxical context, part of the reason cricket grated was overbearing class and colonial strangeness in an antagonistic parallel world. Still, a variety of mates played as kids from all backgrounds and when West Indies, India, Pakistan and Australia toured they‘d go ocd nuts. Then West Indies whitewashed England peak-Thatcher period and it made a lasting impression that this game which wasn’t football, rugby or hurling, this most English of games, actually had competitive merits. Going to a rare few international (as opposed to regionally parochial) tests at Trent Bridge brought me round about 135 degrees
As a foreigner one of the objective benefits of bypassing a lot of baseball myths is you don’t have to care about these dead blokes and any broader culture. My senses don’t seem tamed watching so much as engaged with and that’s with the volume off due to incessant (incessant) advertising. A simple game is still controlled mastery of throwing projectiles uber accurately at different speeds with command of movement, swing a stick without a flat face, miss or hit, catch, walk, run, score and while player analytics is fundamental to baseball, the game retains magical momentum changes and feats of class
Was lucky enough to be gifted free tickets to games by your fellow citizens so there’s a generosity association that’s hard to bypass. Moving around your country playing baseball for fun on days off in cities and quiet towns and being (ironically) able to wallop a ball, opened up centuries of English repression in my psyche (partial joke), this strange American gift, to whack a ball, freely!
Boring, mythological hokum? Maybe, such are the paradoxes of ball games with their mix of joy and fascination. Time wasting is part of many sports. Google tells me a cricket team can be fined for slow over rates. Playing rugby young became a chore rather than fun but I still worship it as a game, not even Celtic FC surpass the 6 Nations. If the US was competing regularly in baseball internationally against competitive challengers, there‘d be added frisson but it doesn’t work this way. Instead it picks off talent from places with a playing link. People drink too, you can’t change everyone to be straight edged, plenty of drunks at Sixers, Celtics and random games attended although there is greater decorum
