I Admit It, I Know Nothing About Baseball

I know this comes as a shock to people but I really don’t (or ‘did’ until last night). And while I’m at it Football and Basketball included. No, I’m not from a farming village in Romania who has just discovered T.V., I have a really good excuse from this – I’m an artist and I’m from L.A.

Over the weekend we were invited to a minor league baseball (The "Quakes" - like in earthquake) game way out in Rancho Cucamonga (really, really far east of L.A. out in the Inland Empire –the “empire” with no castle). The family that lives out there has really gotten into this minor league baseball thing since they’ve been opening them on the far outskirts of L.A., places like Lancaster, Lake Ellsinore, Bakersfield, etc. The stadiums are pretty nice and remind me of those old Disney cartoon’s “Casey at the Bat” type-stadiums. Lots of families, very cheap ticket prices, parking, food and extremely clean. I liked the experience.

The last baseball game I actually attended was about 10 years ago. It was free through work (during the workday event), I showed up, got my free food, hat, said “hi” to the boss and his wife, then got up, and left (to see a movie). It took about 15 minutes.
The time before that, well, I was around 8 or 10 years old. My uncles took my brother and I to a few Dodger games, but I never paid attention, the freaks that practically live at Dodger stadium were much more interesting. And we liked running around the halls with our cousins, not sitting in cramped seats with smelly people.

So last night, I actually “watched” and I got weird stares from people around me (like I was cousin Balki from “Perfect Strangers”) when I was asking my wife (near whisper) questions like “Why are there 2 guys on first base?” “What’s an RBI?” (Rats Been Injected?), “When is this inning over and why is it taking so freakin’ long!” “Are the guys allowed to throw the bat like that?” My wife knows this stuff; she grew up in Ohio and went to college in Georgia (it’s ‘core’ learning in places like that). Out here, well, we did have to play some of them in P.E. but being the creative genius that I am, I was pretty good at forging notes, at a very young age, about having “selective” Asthma. Selective meaning that on days we played Baseball, Football, Basketball - my chronic Asthma would kick in. There’s nothing quite like sitting on the outskirts with the sick kids. They were my “peeps” for the hour and I learned a lot about D&D, Zork, Comic Books, and Star Trek talking to them. Though I never shared their enthusiasm for any of them, but I can carry a pretty good conversation about them like a Mo-Fo.

Now I can add Baseball to the list. O.K. maybe not yet.