Take me out the ball game: Baseball and the old fat Brit

One of the first things you notice when you look out the window of a plane flying over the USA is that the landscape often seems to be carpeted with baseball diamonds. Everywhere that has people has baseball. But what does a sports-phobic Brit know about this most popular and enduring of American pastimes?

Well, for one thing, like many of us I've seen it crop up in at least a dozen films and T.V. shows, and for another the modern English vernacular is peppered with baseball references: stepping up, hitting a home run, taking a rain check, getting to first base, throwing a curve ball, covering the bases, in the ballpark, I could go on and on.

It is amazingly accessible and deeply appealing to a nerd like your humble blogger. Its history and layers of complexity make for a fascinating and involving life-long hobby without ever needing to watch or play the game if you don't want to. I do like to watch the odd game but it's hard to get to see over here without a costly subscription to MLB.tv and in any case, I already have a favourite game (or games), the 2004 AL East Divisional Pennant clash between the Boston Redsox (go Sox!) and their arch-nemesis, the consistently talented New York Yankees (booooo!).

The way everyman underdogs the Redsox came back from 3 games to nothing down in the fourth of seven games to snatch the pennant at the death in the seventh game must surely have made for the most watchable baseball in recent years. I could no more root for the Yankees than I could support Manchester United, their nearest UK equivalents. No way. Winning all the time is just boring and feels like bad sportsmanship somehow. It somehow feels ingrained that following a team should not be EASY.

There are some parallels with British games like football (NOT SOCCER), for example when Sol Campbell moved from Tottenham Hotspur to their arch-rivals Arsenal he was villified. In a similar vein, when Redsox mainstay Johnny Damon followed in Babe Ruth's footsteps and moved to the Yankees as a free agent, Sox Nation were NOT happy. It will be interesting to see what happens when another 2004 pennant big player David Ortiz is lost to free agency this year, as rumours involving a similar move to the Yanks are already circulating.

Baseball is serious stuff, and indeed the US version of Nick Hornby's anthem to fanatical sports devotion, Fever Pitch, swapped baseball for football. However, at the remove of largely taking place on another continent, baseball appeals even to this fat old sport-hating Brit.