Saturday, September 13, 2008

Baseball != Cricket

A Brit reflects on the divergence of American baseball from the old British bat-and-ball games:
Baseball survives on this side of the Atlantic as a playground game for both sexes, rounders. In America it was pumped full of testosterone and self-importance and became the modern baseball game - basically rounders, but with the ball thrown so violently as to be all but unhittable, and with lots of burly men dashing around showing off. I can't help but feel that we Brits got the better of the deal. Baseball, when all's said and done, is not cricket.
I agree with everything he said with the exception of the penultimate sentence, which he got exactly backwards.

(link via Sullivan)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, for people who lost two wars to us and needed our help to win two others, they're pretty uppity at times.

bigcatasroma said...

Here Here Ron Rollins. I send that. Don't tread on me . . .

"It ain't cricket" is a saying over there. I forget what it really means, something like "that's a pretty sh***y thing to do" --- meaning baseball, the REAL, AMERICAN style, is crappy compared to the British version. Next thing that tea sipping softy is going to say is that British "football" is better than the American version. Wait a minute, I may agree with him on that one. Crap . . .

Loztralia said...

I'm British and I like both. Can we leave wars out of it please?