Spring Training

The weather here has been unseasonably warm and sunny (until a little cold snap today), so we’ve been taking advantage of it by playing in the backyard like typical American kids. There are lots of options to satisfy our sporting desires. Throwing the football around is usually my first choice, of course. In the fall, Eric and I made up a great game that involves running in a circle and synchronized spinning and throwing two footballs. It’s hard to explain, but a beautiful thing to behold. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten to break out that one yet this spring because the grass is still pretty fragile (we dug up a lot of grass playing it in the fall).

Since the baseball season began recently in America, we’ve started to play some makeshift baseball in the yard. We have a tennis ball and a plastic bat that is already pretty deformed, but it works. Last Saturday we had our first “real” game. Our teams were based around skin tone, the смуглые (swarthy, dark) people against the белые (white) people. (I’m смуглая, in case you had doubts). This is the same way we compete in all games – pool, Trivial Pursuit, and cards. I hit a home run, but the white people eked out a win in the end. We’ll get them next time.

The other big sports news is that my TV now shows the channel NASN (North American Sports Network). I’m sure it wasn’t there before, but it conveniently appeared right before the NCAA tournament. We’ve enjoyed watching quite a few games, but there are a few downsides: 1) times – only daytime games are convenient for us to watch, and we’ve had to stay up most of the night a couple times to see evening games, 2) commercials – NASN shows about 4 different commercials, and if I hear “There are over 385,000 NCAA student athletes, and almost all of us will go pro in something other than sports,” I might break my TV (I’m even starting to loath the Honda commercial that features the calming voice of Garrison Keillor), 3) the Russian announcer – this guy dubs over the usually banal American sports announcing with even worse commentary. Most of his analysis consists of phrases like, “simply fantastic!”, “16 points!”, “good throw!” He had a brilliant moment of insight during a baseball game the other night when he announced that the word “baseball” is made from two words, namely, “base” and “ball”. He probably knows that he can say anything he wants because there are approximately 17 Russians in the whole country watching NASN. The upside is that around midnight his commentary disappears, after he presumably downs some vodka and passes out in the studio.

Go Twins and BoSox!