What's the fun in baseball?

[Fairy Queen]

Hi

Although I hardly ever post here, I do read the messages, and have 
recently been following all the talk about baseball.  I see that a 
lot of people obviously enjoy it very much, but I was wondering where 
all the excitement comes from? I live in the UK, and have never seen 
a baseball game; I am imagining it as something like rounders, but I 
am sure there are many differences.  A few months ago my brother went 
to America and Canada and whilst he was in one of them (I forget 
where exactly he was) he saw a baseball game, and afterwards sent me 
this email;

We've just got back from watching a baseball game - the Toronto Blue 
Jays against the Baltimore Orioles.  (I have no idea what one of 
those is either.)  And I can say without fear of contradiction that 
it was the most boring three hours of my life.  It made a 16-hour 
coach journey look like a good idea for a rainy day and an 11-hour 
flight seem heavenly.  Not only is it American and therefore stops 
every 5 minutes for a T.V. ad break, but it has pointless features 
built in, like 'stretch time' when, two-thirds of the way through 
everything stops whilst 3 aerobics instructors prance onto the field 
to get the crowd moving again, I guess to avoid lawsuits as people 
get Deep Vein Thrombosis.  But North Americans for some unfathomable 
reason get excited by this sport.  But I wasn't excited, oh no.  All 
I felt was confusion, boredom and frustration.  Confusion because I 
couldn't understand what the hell was going on; boredom because the 
whatever-the-hell they were doing took three hours and frustration 
because I can't understand why they don't just HIT THE F*****G BALL.  
Surely it's all reflexes?  With enough practice, you should be able 
to train yourself to swing automatically at the right time, as 
the 'pitch' (I'm at least getting into the lingo) is always from the 
same spot and the ball travels at roughly the same speed.  It doesn't 
even seem to be that hard a sport.  Compared to cricket, it seems 
positively easy - the fielders have massive gloves doubling the size 
of their hand, the batters only have to run in 15-yard segments and 
get to 'walk' to the next base if the pitcher does something wrong a 
certain number of times, neither of which I could discern.  And, it 
doesn't have the one saving grace of other North American sports, 
namely cheerleaders.  So there you go.  Baseball - the world's most 
boring sport.  Curling; come back, all is forgiven. 

So that really, is all I know about baseball.  I am sure that James 
(my brother) must be exaggerating somewhere, because I doubt the 
sport could be so popular if it was that boring?  Perhaps it's just 
that he's used to 90 minute football matches (soccer), and so three 
hours seemed a little long.

Just wondering
Lucy xxx

PS On a totally different thread ('RE a fum little email') Martha 
said 

By far the greatest children's TV programme of the 80s, though, must 
have been Knightmare. Challenge TV was showing it a while ago and it 
was just as scary as I remembered. Anyone else share my passion for 
this greatest of all great TV shows?

To which I reply;
Yes! I loved that, and I've been watching it recently as well. The 
virtual reality really was basic then, wasn't it?