Olivia Talks Sport: World Series Edition

Hello and welcome to the first installment of "Olivia Talks Sport," wherein I pretend to be knowledgeable about athletics I only watch when strapped to a chair or when there are no bugs crawling across the sidewalk for me to study.


First, though, this brief note: I am aware that "sport" in this context should be pluralized. If you have not yet been fortunate enough to encounter this video or sound clip, please humor me for six glorious seconds.

Good. Now that that's done, let's jump into today's topic: baseball. I know that nothing is more American than baseball--except for maybe football and super-sizing things, but let's try to limit today's post to just one sport about which I know absolutely nothing, and we'll touch on the obesity epidemic at a later date. Yes, I'm aware that the way I feel about this popular sport is how many people feel about my favorite sport, soccer. A friend once told me that he can't stand to watch the beautiful game because he finds it "ass-numbingly dull." I, of course, take exception to this, but am relieved to know that he feels the same way--if not more strongly so--about baseball.

But my point here today is not to bash a game where people stand around with sticks, swing them at things, and then once in a while prance from one while flat thing to the next over the course of, oh, eight hours. My point is to say that if I'm going to find something a colossal waste of time, I should at least educate myself on what exactly it is that makes watching it so excruciating.

In other words, I'm becoming a baseball expert.

Let's start with the fact that I know both of the teams playing in the World Series: the San Francisco Giants and the Detroit Tigers. I know, too, that tonight will be the fourth game, played in Detroit, and if the Giants win this then they win the series. I know that no team in the history of this competition has ever come back from a three games to zero deficit, so things aren't looking too rosy for Detroit. I know that RBI stands for Run Batted In, and I even know what that means. I know, thanks to my patient mother, that pitchers bat in the National League but not in the American League, and I know that for a pitcher to hit an RBI is quite a feat, although such an accomplishment doesn't exactly get me up on my feet waving my logoed hand towel. I know that pitchers have approximately 700 different pitches in their repertoire, some over 100 miles per hour, whereas I have only one: off-target and really really slow. Actually, two. I can also do it underhand. I know that though they have absurd upper body strength and hand-eye coordination I can't even begin to comprehend, I'm fairly certain I could demolish most professional baseball players in a cardio test.

But you see, I snark because I care. (By the way, "snark" is a verb now. Spread the word.) I know that any number of people could spit back at me all the reasons why soccer is useless, and many do. One friend cites the sheer pointlessness of a game that could end in a 0-0 tie, or any tie for that matter. Another finds the sport nothing more than a complex game of ping pong. And no one who's not an avid fan understands the offsides rule, even when I recreate it with condiments at fine dining establishments. What I am doing here is putting a leash on my right to sarcasm, taking it for a stroll around the block, and stopping at the baseball field on the corner to marvel at how the same game was in the bottom of the eighth when I last walked by...the previous week.