A good friend gave me two tickets to the Red Sox-Rays game last night at City of Palms Park in Fort Myers FL and asked me to take a younger British visitor to our island to a baseball game and explain the game to him. We had superb seats, directly behind the catcher with the protective netting to keep us from getting nailed by a plethora of hard foul shots.
It turns out, Patrick, the British lad, is a sports nut and follows baseball on Sky TV in U.K. when they show games. He was very astute in understanding the strategies and nuances of the game. About the only thing I could teach him was to keep a box score in his program. We did this for a few innings and then we said to hell with it and just watched the game, but he caught on to scorekeeping quickly. In exchange he gave me some greater appreciation of cricket, which I am beginning to enjoy when we summer in England. As I said, he is a real sports nut, very keen on Football (Soccer, that is!), American Football and even Basketball.
I don't get too many baseball games these days, but City of Palms Park is an ideal setting, surrounded by Royal Palm trees, plus the weather was in the seventies with low humidity. The park was sold out---over 8000 at the game---and you would have thought I was in a tropical New England judging by the nasal Yankee accents I heard. "Where did ya pahk the cah, Harry?", one woman behind me asked. I felt out of uniform without a Red Sox replica jersey. Patrick and I, just to be contrary, cheered for the Tampa Rays, who, incidentally, won 7-4.
I know many people find baseball as exciting as watching grass grow, but, again, I'm a contrarian: I love the symmetry of a baseball diamond, the grace of the fielders in action, the crack of a solid hit and the base running. It was my game as a kid, and the kid in me still loves it. It is a kind of pleasure to see a competition where body contact is incidental and secondary to the individual talent of each player.
A good super hot dog and a couple of excellent Belgian beers made the evening complete. Anglo-American relations were never better than at the old ball game. By the way, a cute young high school girl did a great job on the national anthem a capella---and she knew all the lyrics!
You can take me out to the ball game anytime when it's like this!
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