Bbbbbbbbaseball :-p

The race was last weekend and this weekend was a baseball game. Not that I ever wanted to see a baseball game. I don't even know the rules properly, for heaven's sake! But since Sri got the tickets free, we thought why the heck not! Our idea was that it would be a new experience.

And so on the evening of Sunday, 24th June 2007, we were off to Applebee's Park in Lexington itself (hardly 10 min dirve away). The tickets were from Sri's company, so they had actually reserved a suite and we were treated like VIPs :-D. There was also some food and drinks available (The hotdogs were non-vegetarian and hence prohibited, but there was popcorn, peanuts and colas). So we made ourselves comfortable and had our first view of a baseball field:





Before I start my rant, let me give a simple explanation of baseball (for those who are ingnorant like me :-D). There are 2 teams of 9 players each and they play for 9 innings. Each inning has 2 halves - one in which a team bats and the other in which the other team bats. The visitors bat in the 1st half of the 1st inning (so there's no coin toss to decide) while the home team pitches. In our case the home team was the Lexington Legends (lets call them LLs) and the vistors were the Asheville Tourists (ATs) :). There are 4 markers called bases through which a batter (thats what the batsman is called :-p) has to run to complete a single run. Few simple rules:

1) If the pitcher pitches right i.e within a range around the batter and the batter is not able to hit the ball with the bat, then its called a Strike. Now pitching is like bowling straight to the bat. And 3 strikes means the batter is out.

2) If the pitcher pitches wrong i.e not within a range around the batter then its called a Ball. 3 balls mean the batter gets to walk to the next base.

3) When the batter manages to hit the ball with his bat right i.e the ball does not cross a line next to him, then he can run to the next base and so on. If it crosses the foul line, he has to bat again. Once a batter runs to the next base, a new batter bats.

4) If the batter hits the ball and the fielders catch it before it touches the ground, then the batter is out.

5) Also if a fielder catches the ball and manages to touch the batter/other runners inbetween bases, then the batter/runner is out.

6) 3 outs mean end of one half of the inning.

7) If the batter hits the ball out of a certain boundary (like the Cricket Sixer) or if he manages to run through all the bases, then its called a Homerun.

More details here.

So the match started at 6:05 PM. As mentioned earlier, first to bat were ATs.




It was kinda interesting, but it never got exciting. The ATs scored "0" runs in the 1st half of the 1st inning and later the LLs scored only 1 run in their half. There were breaks between the halfs and there was some entertainment for the audience.




There also was music to encourage the audience to clap, cheer and so on. But maybe the teams themselves were not capable enough :-p. Well, I'm not an expert in baseball anyways, but to be honest, it was kinda boring :-p.

Just as it got a bit exciting, what with the ATs scoring 3 runs in the 2nd inning and the LLs were lagging in the 2nd half of the 2nd inning, it started pouring crazily. There were thunders and lightnings and the field had to be covered up for protection from rain.




While many people ran helter skelter, we thankfully had a cover above our heads. We thought the match would get cancelled as the rains were really bad. But the skies did clear up a little after about half an hour. But there was no indication of the match restarting even then. We waited for another half an hour before finally deciding to leave.

On Monday we found out that the match resumed after 2 hours and LLs managed to beat the ATs 4 runs to 3 runs. Pretty exciting eh? :-p. For cricket fans like us, who are not satisfied with any score below 250, this feels like loose change :-p. We also found out that some of Sri's colleagues stayed on till 10:30 PM and the match still wasn't over when they left :-D.

So that was my first experience of baseball. Not bad, but not very good either :-p.