Baseball is one of those sports whose rules you don't have to understand to be amazed anyway.
It helps to know them, of course, but it doesn't matter if they just immerse themselves in the magic of an American afternoon that turns into an evening and they are still playing.
One throws, the second catches, and the third in between tries to hit.
The grass, the dust, the white pillows along which the players advance, surrounded by referees who often push enormous bellies in front of them.
The ball flies far and high
Which makes the sport even more unreal, because the players already look so grown up in their long pants and jerseys (so that you always have the feeling of watching a family party where the fathers have roused themselves to something against the whole barbecue in the garden to do). And in between the ball flies high and far, and someone runs after it and catches it or not because it sails into the stands, then the stadium bursts into jubilation and the camera goes up and you can sense the American city behind the floodlights.
I could watch it for hours, baseball doesn't get any shorter than that.
And always do it when summer comes, because the streaming service Dazn transmits the channel of the American baseball league MLB non-stop: Mets against Yankees, the Cardinals against the Cubs, mostly in cuts, but often live, like Wednesday, as the Atlanta Braves were playing against the San Diego Padres and I didn't care how it turned out because once again I was only hoping for the moments when the camera opens over the stands.
Trucks and animals
Or advertising is coming.
American advertising can be recognized by the fact that it's about trucks or animals that are either grilled, then it's advertising for the restaurant chain "Wendy's", or can speak, then they want to sell you insurance.
Sometimes a beautiful retired couple step out onto the porch of their paid house in a landscape like from a novel by John Irving, then their children and grandchildren drive up in a truck, after which animals are grilled that would otherwise speak.
And then the dream of investing is over and the game continues.
A rule that you immediately understand when you watch: baseball is a men's business.
Not true, women love baseball too, but men have always moderated and commented on it.
Until now. On Tuesday, for the first time in the history of the MLB, only female journalists attended a game. Their names were Melanie Newman, Sarah Langs, Alanna Rizzo and Lauren Gardner. The Tampa Bay Rays played against the Baltimore Orioles. A historic moment, but it was way too long, even for baseball, to get that far.