So Major League Baseball hit Sydney? Whoop-de-doo.
Forgive me for not being tickled pink by the notion, but the arrogance displayed by the players, who have publicly stated they don’t want to be here, and the fact it is nothing more than the equivalent of a learning impaired younger brother to cricket, has me wondering why they even bothered?
It in fact begs a million questions, but I will settle for three. Why did we violate the hallowed ground of the SCG by turning it into a baseball diamond and forcing the Sheffield Shield final to be played elsewhere? Why did we fill the food stores with artery clogging monstrosities that actually make the humble meat pie seem the healthy alternative?
And perhaps most stirringly – why are we celebrating the worst of America?
Fat, white, rich Americans are hardly sitting at the top of anybody’s favourite people list. Apart from, of course, fat, white, rich Americans. These are the people I associate baseball (and the NFL) with, and these are the people who think a 60cm ‘Superdog’ is something we should be sinking our teeth into.
Is Kenny ‘Fucking’ Powers (not to be confused with Willie ‘Fucking’ Mason) that far removed from your average baseball fan/player? If Kenny ‘Fucking’ Powers were in fact playing, I’d be first one through the gates, but he’s not. Instead we have a bunch of equally arrogant, but far less charismatic dropkicks whose only discernible talents are either being able to hit or throw a ball.
And intrinsically isn’t that all baseball is?
Comparisons with cricket have always annoyed me because the similarities end after the glaringly obvious ones. Cricket has strategy. It is a game of mental fortitude. A gruelling test of one’s concentration and will to survive and conquer (I am obviously talking about Test cricket here, not 20/20, because in my mind… that’s just not cricket).
Baseball is basically just chuck the ball at me three times and I’ll try hit it over the fence or away from the fielders. Get a big bloke with decent hand eye coordination and you’ve got yourself a Major Leaguer! I’m sure baseball fans will be saying there is more to it than that, but if a pile of shit has a few marshmallows shoved in it, it is still a pile of shit. In fact, they would probably serve said delicacy at a baseball game.
Let’s be honest, the only good thing about baseball is the movies – Major League, A League of Their Own, Moneyball, Major League 2. But these movies weren’t really about baseball were they? Baseball was just the platform on which to build intricate character dynamics and put Charlie Sheen in a leather jacket.
By Al McClintock