Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and...wait, there are no American cars any more...
I was reading Inland Empress' comment to my comment, in which a discussion of writer's rejection morphed into a comment on women's baseball, when I realized two things:

First, it's finally come. Remember when you were young and you thought that someday you could grow up and be a professional sports player? Then you hit 20 and figured there was still the outside chance. Well, I'm over 40 now, and there aren't that many major leaguers entering their fifth decade. This especially hit me at last night's Quakes game, where all of the players were about half my age.

Second, I figure I should comment on my visit to the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes game on Saturday night. Although the Quakes lost, a splendid time was had by all. My biggest challenge was explaining baseball to a German girl who had only the slightest understanding of cricket. Excerpts:

Each team tries to keep the ball between those lines. If it goes outside of those lines, that's bad.

The player in the field caught the ball, so that's bad for our team.

The man in the circle is throwing the ball over there. If our player isn't on the square bag when the ball reaches there, he's "out."

Is it just me, or is baseball harder to explain than, say, soccer? (Eddykins, if you're reading this, substitute "football" as appropriate.) You can give a high level explanation of soccer in one sentence - "Each team tries to get the ball into the other team's net." Even a high level explanation of baseball is convoluted - "The team with the stick tries to hit the ball between the lines, where an opposing player cannot catch it." It's tough...