My First Baseball Game

On Sunday I went to my first baseball game with my friend Ken Williams of KWD Photography (not so subtle plug). The question I get asked when I tell people that I went was did I enjoy it, this is swiftly followed by an apology about how bad the team is. 

To say that baseball is just not cricket is cliche, but hey we are in California! There was no polite clapping and though I found the sledging given to the opposing team to be surprisingly tame! I found the whole experience quite overwhelming, the sights, sounds and smells were like an overload to my senses. It is amazing what people will eat at these events, not sure where some of the food consumed sits on the food pyramid… smelt great though! 

My understanding of baseball comes from two very different sources, films like Major League (whatever happened to Charlie Sheen...) and Field of Dreams (build it and they will come...). The other source of my limited baseball knowledge comes from reading dozens of papers on throwing injuries. Pitchers shoulders provide millions of dollars each year to orthopedic specialists and it is a fascinating field to work in. So yes, I didn’t understand the rules, and yes I was watching the pitchers warm up to see if they were suffering for any gleno-humeral instability (sore shoulders) and yes I half expected the crowd to erupt into a rendition of “wild thing”… 

Baseball is a game much like cricket, it is full of statistics, nothing happens for ages and that is meant to be exciting, it is quite inaccessible for those not brought up in the game but at least it doesn’t last for 5 days only to end up in a tie!

Yes I enjoyed my first baseball game. I was with my friend, in the sunshine with our cameras.. what more could a man want…

Alan