Baseball is a game interrupted by sporadic eruptions of athletic interferences.
– Wilfried F. Voss

Yes, I do stand to my statement that Baseball is not a sport. To put it in a nut-shell, Baseball is a game interrupted by sporadic eruptions of athletic interferences, or, as Yogi Berra put it so much more exquisitely, “Baseball is 90% mental; the other half is physical.”

Okay, let me give you the quick run-down. I was born and raised in Germany, a country where soccer is the most popular sports of all. Soccer, in turn, is a sport where twenty-two players are in constant motion for two periods of mostly uninterrupted forty-five minutes (At least that’s how I remember it.). I have heard complaints about it like, “I don’t like soccer, because you never know when the game ends.” Well, think of baseball, football, basketball, or hockey, and tell me at what time exactly the game will end. I believe, soccer is not as popular here in the United States as it is in the rest of the world, because it does require ninety minutes of uninterrupted attention. That leaves no time for a trip to the bathroom or the refrigerator.

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy watching baseball while writing posts for my blog (Tonight it’s Tampa Bay at the Boston Red Sox), browsing on the Internet, or reading a magazine. But with 160+ excruciatingly slow games per season it takes a lot to get me excited, especially when it comes to watching the tremendous lack of urgency the players demonstrate during nine long innings. In baseball terms this behavioral pattern is called “patience.” I call it a lack of passion.

Talking about passion… When I came into this country a mere twenty-one years ago I was excited about American football. I still remember watching my first Superbowl in 1989, San Francisco 49ers vs. the Cincinnati Bengals. And I still remember Tim Krumrie of the Bengals, who suffered a broken leg while trying to tackle Roger Craig, and I saw the slow-motion re-play way too many times. The story is, Krumrie stayed in the locker room until the game was finished, refusing to leave his teammates.

You may ask, what has that to do with baseball?

Well, for the last eight years I have been married to an Irish-American red-head, and she is a wicked Red Sox fan. During the brief period of dating, and an insignificantly longer time of being engaged, my wife did follow the Red Sox games, however, without my participation, due to obvious lack of enthusiasm. That changed in the following 2003 season. Trying to please my wife I started watching the games with her, and, naturally, I had a lot of questions. These questions had the potential of creating great stress on our relationship (“Why isn’t there a coach at second base?”). Add to this my wife’s deficiency explaining the game in layman’s terms, especially when she is angry at me.

Such a situation arose during a game when the then-manager of the Boston Red Sox, whose name is not to be uttered in this household, pulled the starting pitcher Derek Lowe, because he had a blister on his thumb. Hey, Tim Krumrie, I wanted to yell into the TV, they just pulled somebody out of a game because he had a blister on his thumb! Okay, I also remember Curt Schilling’s bleeding ankle during the 2004 World Series, and that temporarily shook my view on baseball.

Just for the record, I did follow the entire 2003 season, including that fateful seventh play-off game versus the hated New York Yankees. Like so many others I yelled at the TV in disbelief when the then-manager of the Red Sox (you know, the un-person whose name is not to be uttered in this household) did not pull the pitcher, Pedro Martinez, even though he was very obviously exhausted at that point. Think about it. I had “learned” baseball during the previous six months, and even I knew the manager had just made a fatal mistake.

What it all comes down to is that I experienced the drama that so many Red Sox fans had endured during many previous seasons. As they say, the rest is history. The Red Sox won the World Series the next year. Many fans have waited a lifetime to see the Red Sox win the World Series; too many Red Sox fans lived a life without seeing it. I can say, I saw the drama in my first season, and the Red Sox won the World Series the next year. That’s what I call German efficiency.

Still, I don’t consider myself a baseball specialist. I still have too many questions about the game, and most of them are not polite. How come that Dustin Pedroia never swings at the first pitch? How come that Manny Ramirez can take a piss during the game? How come that players endure injuries while running 90 feet from one base to another? How come they stop games when it rains?

Well, I guess, I will continue watching the Red Sox games, and maybe some day somebody will have answered all my questions. Until then I will enjoy America’s game.