"Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barry Dave)

Hey Babe Hum Babe Hum Babe Hey ...

The crack of the bat ... the roar of the crowd ... the sight of slug-shaped, saliva-drenched gobs of tobacco seeping into the turf and causing mutations among soil-based life forms. ...

Baseball. For me, it’s as much a part of summer as sitting bolt upright in bed at 3:30 A.M. and trying to remember if I filed for an extension on my tax return. And the memories baseball season brings back! Ebbetts Field, for example. That’s all I remember: Ebbetts Field. What the hell does it mean? Is it anything important? Maybe one of you readers can help.

Why does baseball hold such great appeal for Americans? A big factor, of course, is that the Russians can’t play it. Try as they might, they can’t seem to master infield chatter, which is what the members of the infield constantly yell at the pitcher. A typical segment of infield chatter would be:

Hey babe hum babe hum babe hey no batter hey fire that ball hum that pellet whip that hose baby sling that sphere c’mon heave that horsehide right in there c’mon dammit we’re bored we’re really bored bored bored bored out here hunched over in these cretin pants c’mon let’s fling that orb let’s unload that globe you sum-bitch let’s THROW that ball please for God’s sake let’s ...

The infield’s purpose in chattering at the pitcher like this is to get him so irritated that he deliberately throws the ball at the batter’s face, which minimizes the danger that the batter will swing and thus put the infield in the position of having to stand in the path of a potentially lethal batted ball. American boys learn infield chatter as very young children, but the Russians have tremendous trouble with it. The best they’ve been able to do so far is “Holy mackerel, you are putting forth some likely shots now, ho ho!” which is pretty good for only five years’ effort, but hardly the level of chatter they’ll need in international competition.

Another reason why Americans are Number One in baseball is the phrases yelled by fans to encourage the players. American fans generally use the three basic phrases:

Boo. You stink. You really stink, you stupid jerk.

These phrases of encouragement have dominated baseball since the 1920s, when the great George Herman Ruth made baseball history at Yankee Stadium by pointing his bat at the stands and correctly identifying them in only four attempts. But in recent years, a large cold-air mass of change has begun to form in the North, where fans of the Montreal Expos, who all know how to speak French because there’s nothing else to do in Canada after 4 P.m., have developed some new and very competitive phrases, such as:

–Vous bumme, il y a un poisson dans votre bibliotheque. (You bum, there is a fish in your library.) —Boux. (Boo.)

Thus encouraged, the Expos have become a baseball Powerhouse. They probably would have won the World Series by now except that the players refuse to return from spring training until Labor Day.

So the United States is still the best, and you can bet the mortgage that the World Series, which is open to any city in the world that has a major-league franchise, will this year be won once again by a team consisting of U.S. citizens plus maybe two dozen guys named Julio from friendly spider-infested nations to the south. In fact, the only real problem facing major-league baseball at the moment is that everybody associated with it in any way is a drug addict. This is beginning to affect the quality of the game:

ANNOUNCER: For those viewers who are just joining us, the game has been delayed slightly because the umpires really wanted some nachos, and also the Yankees keep turning into giant birds. I can’t remember seeing that happen before in a regular season game, can you, Bob? COLOR COMMENTATOR (shrieking): THESE aren’t my crayons!

So baseball has problems. So who doesn’t? It’s still a very national pastime, and I for one always feel a stirring of tremendous excitement as we approach the All-Star Game. I’m assuming here that we haven’t already passed the All-Star Game.

What I like about the All-Star Game is that the teams aren’t picked by a bunch of experts who use computers and care only about cold statistics—what a player’s batting average is, how well he throws, whether he’s still alive, etc. No, the All-Star teams are chosen by the fans, the everyday folks who sit out in the hot sun hour after hour, cursing and swilling beer that tastes like it has been used to launder jockstraps. The fans don’t care about statistics: They vote from the heart, which is why last year’s starting American League lineup included Lou Gehrig, O.J. Simpson, and Phil Donahue.

And what lies ahead, after the All-Star break? I look for several very tight pennant races, with many games ending in scores of 4-2, 5-1, and in certain instances 2-0. In the National League, I think we’ll see a sharp late-season increase in the number of commercials wherein players employ inappropriate baseball imagery, such as, “Hit a home run against nasal discharge.” And in the American League, I look for Dave Winfield to be attacked by seagulls. As always, pitching will be the key.