BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA – It’s only fitting that on Angry Ward’s day off, they’re throwing in anger for the first time since somebody that wasn’t a Met got somebody out to win the World Series. Yet today, we’re like giddy girls on Prom Night. Because we have one of our favorite features on camera: Baseball vs Cricket: Baseball’s Father Vs America’s Pastime.
But to whom do we really owe our baseball glee to? Who should we thank? Abner Doubleday? The folks in Cooperstown would have you believe so, but it’s abundantly clear that he’s not the guy. In fact, Hoboken, N.J. calls Cooperstown out on that, claiming they had the first baseball game. However, after a little Wikipedia action, one can see baseball going back to 1744 England. And even more probing – we like probing – has French clerics playing something baseball-like in 1344. Interesting how probing and clerics pop into the same sentence… But there’s no way in HELL that we’re going to attribute our national pastime to France. No frogging tile way!
Instead, we’re inclined to go along with the popular theory that Rounders and Cricket were the likely parents of our MLB baby. Forget inclined – we’re cocksure! So cocksure (we like typing cocksure), that Cricket is baseball’s Daddy that we went to Australia to check it out – on RugbyWrapUp.com’s dime. Check it out:
And there you have it. You can see all the similarities. The wicket keeper is the catcher. The bowlers are the pitchers. You got your silly mid-offs (Manny, Ollie Perez, Ozzie Guillen, Roger McDowell) and so on… And the 8-day matches are like a Red Sox/Yankees series.
Now grab your balls and get ready for the high hard one. As you move up in the box, imagine how you’d handle a Randy Johnson… And for Pete Rose’s sake, don’t let any balls hit you in the face!
Baseball vs Cricket… Gotta love it.
Cam James, manana.
