Baseball!

I'm home now for a while, and I have adjusted my sleep cycle to Dutch standards again. Well, maybe English standards, because I always tend to go to sleep a little later than most people do here. It also took me a while to get used to being at home again, alone, instead of being with friends constantly. It's nice to have my own stuff around, but I did miss have people (and cats!) around. I made cardboard dolls of Kil, Firery and Del and we eat icecream together in the morning. When it gets dark I put cardboard Paul on my balcony with the cardboard chickens, where he will be closing their door. Since Kil is very busy most of the time I have to move her doll allover the place constantly. I am looking for a cheap remote controlled toy car that can carry it so I can ride it around while sitting on my couch. I also need to find a way to make toy cats loose hair. If you have any idea how to do this, please let me know!

Todays blog will be in English only, for no particular reason other than laziness. Also, we have been talking Dutch in the Netherlands for hundreds of years, I think it is about time we let another language have its turn.  

The day before I flew back to Europe I was tired. We decided not to do too much, just some more souvenir shopping and packing. In the evening Firery and Paul took me to a baseball game, which was very interesting. Baseball is one of the most popular sports in America. They play football too, but they seem to have some trouble producing round balls. American footballs look like an egg, and their field is full of lines. They also run with the ball in their hands, which would be totally unacceptable in the Netherlands. Baseball however is a totally different kind of sport. I have played baseball a few times on highschool, but I never really understood the game, because I always chose a spot way back in the field so I could smoke a cigarette. Baseball gloves are perfect to hide a cigarette in so the teacher doesn't see it. American baseball is way different, though. A lot of rules in the game were totally new to me. I was lucky though, Firery and Del also invited Chris, an English professor who, according to Firery and Del, knew everything there is to know about the game.

When we arrived at the stadium I felt like being in Holland again for a moment. Not because of the people or the stadium or anything. It was the fact that, however we already had tickets, we had to stand in line at the ticket booth. Something bureaucratic like that is probably made up by a Dutch politician who emigrated. The tickets we got gave us a seat way back in the stadium. If it were a soccer stadium we would be very close to the field, but Firery and Del told me they were not the best seats, and we would move to better ones after the game started and the uniformed guard would be gone. That made me feel right at home again, because sneaking to more expensive seats could have been something my mother made up. The home team were called the Blue Rocks. I know blue rocks from the Breaking Bad TV-series, but I am not sure that those were the kind of blue rocks that the team was named after.

 Baseball games take a lot more time than soccer games. Appart from hitting the ball, running, catching the ball and start the whole sequence over again, a lot of other stuff has to be done, things I never knew about. When Chris arrived I was able to ask all my questions about the game. Chris didn't look like a professor at all. He was a very casually dressed guy with a very friendly face who had a constant mischievous smile, as if he didn't take existance seriously and was secretly making fun of it, in a mild way. I also thought I saw a halo of light around his head, but that could have been the heat. I was convinced he was the reincarnation of the Buddha, untill Firery and Del introduced me, and told me this was Chris. We got us a drink and I then realized the game had already started. I was amazed I had missed the start of it, nobody yelled or sang war songs like in a Dutch stadium, nor were any fireworks thrown or riot police forming lines of defence. Everyone acted the same way as they did before the game started, and many were just walking up and down to the bar and icecream stands. Children were playing around the seats and people watching the game were having conversations and were making phonecalls. Chris explained the rules to me, while pointing his finger to specific areas on the field and people dressed in horsebackriding suits on the field. I have no clue what he told me really, it was as if someone was trying to explain complicated math kung fu to me. Now and then Chris asked me if I understood, and I enthusiastically nodded, scared he would try to explain the complex process again. The essence of the game was that one team tried to hit the ball far away, while the other team threw it back again. When Chris had explained the rest of it, and I asked him some questions that made it look like I actually seemed to understand, we came to talk about other subjects, like books, cultural differences between our countries and stuff like that, which was much more fun.

A furry walked by dressed in a Blue Rocks team, and I learned this was Rocky, the mascotte. Rocky was very popular and got hugs from all the kids, and me. He also shook my hand, but he had very sweaty paws. Unlike Dutch mascottes, in America they actually play a role in the game itself. During the game, Rocky suddenly came out dressed in a karate suit, and started to smash wooden planks that were held by three assistants. I was surprised that baseball had so many different aspects. I asked Chris about it, but it turned out that he didn't know as much of the game as Firery and Del had made me believe. He needed more and more time to think of an answer to my questions, and he couldn't really tell me much about Rocky's karate techniques, nor about the giant Hotdog, Moose and Donut that were in a running match around the field during the game. When a guy dressed like Sellery ran out on the field after a homerun I was starting to get really confused. By the time I saw three children with big sticks hitting on a guy dressed as a giant bug I was totally flabbergasted. Sports in America aren't just very complex, they are also very very weird. I took a cigarette break outside of the stadium to get back to myself after seeing these bizarre scenes. Meanwhile the game went on and on, and I started to realize why the people were not yelling and cheering and jumping all the time. This was gonna be a long sit. These people knew, and were saving their energy.

 

 It started to get dark slowly, and still the scoreboard was half empty. It was clear though that the Blue Rocks were way behind and risked loosing the game. Suddenly there seemed to be a very exciting moment in the game. I noticed, because I saw a few people raising their eyebrows, and a woman stopped knitting for a moment and looked up to the field. One guy yelled, but I am not sure it was about the game. Maybe someone stole his drink. Chris explained that if the guy with the bat was able to hit a homerun then three of his teammates could make it to the home spot and a guy dressed as sellery would run out again, giving the Blue Rocks enough points to turn the game around. Instead of hitting the ball however, he made a vertical movement with the bat and hit the floor with it. "Ooooh, too bad!" I yelled out, expressing my dissapointment on this crucial moment. Chris then explained that the hitman (or did he use another word?) always taps the floor before he gets ready to hit the ball. When the guy did hit the ball, the crowds reaction wasn't much different than when he hit the floor. The Blue Rocks didn't make it to a homerun. A woman went back to knitting and Firery and Del decided this was the moment where we would change to the expensive seats, even though we didn't have the proper ticket for them. Right after we sat down very close to the field, I noticed the uniformed dude standing just behind us. I put a lot of effort to act natural, and took a sip of my fake beer as if I had been sitting there during the start of the game. Del and Chris were watching the game again while Firery was looking up something on her iphone. My mind wandered off for a moment, when suddenly I saw Firery duck and a baseball barely missed her. It hit an empty seat with gigantic speed. At first I thought the people who had payed a lot of money for their ticket had gotten angry at us and started to throw stuff, but it was the damn baseball. A few moments later a guy hit the ball and the bat broke. A pointy part of the bat got launched towards the audience and landed just in front someone standing next to the field. After a while another ball was launced into the crowd, and then another. I decided to skip my plan of taking a nap, since I had to pay attention to flying objects sitting so close to the field. Why were these seats more expensive? It was freaking dangerous to be sitting there!

  
While the game was still going on, and some guys were shaving the beard they had grown during the first part of it, I decided to take another cigarette break. Soccer games are much shorter, and the gameplay is much more intense. This has pros and cons, and the good part about baseball games is that there is enough time to check out cute women, and get a drink, or to take care of your koala bear in the mensroom. During soccer you can't go pee, because when your team scores while you are wasting time in the toilet, people will make fun of you missing it during the rest of the evening. Baseball isn't like that though, and I do think the players do deserve a lot of respect for being so concentrated while so much time goes by that archeologists are doing excavations to learn about the time when the game started. When the game was over and we walked back to the car it seemed that years had gone by. I didn't get bored or anything, I really liked being at the game, but I could have never imagined that baseball takes so much time.

Back home we enjoyed more of Firery's homemade icecream and I went to pack. Del asked me what time I had to be at the airport in New York the next day, so I glanced at the paper and we calculated we would have to leave at 9 AM. Traffic could be dense around NYC, and I didn't want to miss my flight back home. More about my flight back home will follow soon.