BASEBALL

That is has become so much more tactical will not win the sport too many new fans these days. There's so much strategy behind every pitch and every decision to swing or not swing. I understand that if you're familiar with all the technique behind different pitches, and that if you're familiar with a lot of personal stats, that watching a baseball game can be really thrilling. Unfortunately, since I don't know much about those things, I find baseball one of the most boring things to watch. I would rather watch nearly any other sport. Including golf.

You're right about the strategy. Our manager Paul Molitor is the worst. He studies things like ball rotation, humidity, in otherwords every pitch and every swing or take from the batter. He's taken the fun out of it.

Baseball is basically a non-existant sport in Norway (and most of Europe). I've never really understood the game, except that it's like an advanced form of a kiddie game called 'dødball' ('dead ball') here in Norway. I've seen a few movies about it, but they've never really engaged me much.

Isn't baseball really only big in the US, Cuba and a couple of Asian countries?

A well written article that covers all the bases (pun intended). This year I spent time watching college baseball, the Minnesota Gophers in particular. The tickets are $5.00 and since the average attendance is 500 people I'm treated on a first name basis. I park my wheel chair in a designated handicap spot and am treated like a king. They bring me water and help me to the restroom. The games are 2 1/2 hours I think partly due to the fact that there aren't 8 pitchers used in a game and there isn't a minute between pitches and 5 minutes of commercials between innings. The author of the article talked about 3 hour games. Try to sit through 4 to 5 hour games. Our manager is insane about the stats and bases all his decisions on them. Did you ever stop to think about measuring the weetness of the grass? Today everything is taken into consideration. Since my entire childhood revolved around baseball I still have a fondness for it. We use to take our duplicate baseball cards we couldn't trade off and attach them to the spokes with wooden clothes pins.