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BASEBALL |
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Baseball
is without a doubt the quintessential American sport. An afternoon at a
major league baseball stadium can provide you with an extraordinary
insight into the American psyche. Dare we say that baseball is more
American than apple-pie. Baseball
is also the easiest major American sport to get tickets to. Most stadiums
have a capacity of at least 50,000 – and as they play nearly every day
or night, and sometimes twice a day, it is a pretty fair bet that you can
get to see a game at some stage of your trip. Some
games may be harder than others to get into – especially during the new
inter-league matches that have reinstated some famous cross-town
rivalries like the New York Yankees versus the New York Mets or the
Chicago White Sox versus the Chicago Cubs. Generally, however, you’ll
find it easy to get a ticket on the day of the game. The
Major League Baseball (MLB) competition is divided into the National
League and the American League. Within these are geographically based
conferences, where teams are grouped into 5 or 6 teams and it is against
these teams where you try and garner the best record. Like
other sports, there are several historical reasons why certain teams play
in a certain League but unlike other sports, teams only get to play other
teams within their own League, except for a couple of weeks throughout the
year where Inter-League matches take place to facilitate local derbies and
other interesting match-ups. This is only a recently instituted practice
that has been welcomed by fans as some city or state rivalries never ever
took place unless they made the World Series. The
key difference between the two Leagues today is that the American League,
for which the New York Yankees, the Chicago White Sox, the Oakland
Athletics, and the Toronto Blue Jays are members, have the ‘designated
hitter’ rule, where a specialist batter is designated to play only as a
batter – he doesn’t have to field – and the pitcher does not bat. The
National League, which includes the New York Mets, the Chicago Cubs, the
San Francisco Giants and the Montreal Expos, do not have this rule – the
pitcher bats and every batter fields. It does actually change the dynamics
of the game – the American League has a greater reliance on batting
power and pitching prowess whereas the National League is much more
tactical with regards to replacements throughout the game and team
selections. The
baseball pre-season starts with spring training in late January/early
February in southern holiday towns in Florida, Arizona and other
sun-drenched states. The real thing generally starts on the first day in
April, although in 2002 it started on March 31. The regular season
finishes at the end of September. The
season is approximately 160 games long over approximately 180 days. So on
most days around the country you can catch a game. The playoffs then begin
and the World Series usually happens around the end of October. If
you crave the smaller crowds and a bit more ‘real life’ to your
sporting events, then you may wish to try attending a ‘Minor League’
game. The Minor League is a generalised term for the three grades of
baseball (A, AA, and AAA) that provide feeder (or farm) teams to the Major
League teams. These teams are dotted all over the country in some of the
smallest places you’ve never heard of. There are minor league
conferences all over the country and are too plentiful to list here but if
you check www.minorleaguebaseball.com you will
find out exactly where there may be a minor league baseball game close to
you. |
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