Baseball

For Christmas over a year ago, I bought my husband the 2K10 major league baseball game for the Wii because he played baseball in Wii sports for hours every day and complained that it didn't have enough innings, that it applied the mercy rule (aborting the game if a team was more than five runs ahead), and that it didn't offer the ability to build a team and follow their stats for an entire season. All of these were remedied in the game I got for him.

Unfortunately, he played it briefly once and then set it aside, claiming it was too complicated to play. I finally decided maybe if I figured out how to play it, it may pique his interest in the game and encourage him to play. So today, I sat down in front of the Wii for a crash course in baseball.

The first team the game put me up against was the Yankees. The game offered me a pitching tutorial before the game started, and I practiced for a while before beginning the game. I threw the first pitch, and the computer slammed a home run. Hooray. I threw a second pitch, which was promptly hit to right field. My fielder ran toward the ball, tripped, and fell on his face. The ball bounced a few times, and my fielder stood there and stared at it as the runner took the opportunity to run home. The third batter hit another home run. I actually got a strike on the fourth batter before he hit one out to center field. My center fielder was camped right in the glowing area that told me where the ball was going to land. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he threw himself flat on the ground. The ball bounced behind him. He clambered back to his feet, turned in a circle, then threw himself to the ground again. I imagined what must have been going through his mind: "Oh boy! The ball's coming right at me! Watch this! Hey, what if my arm isn't strong enough to throw it back to the pitcher all the way? I better tone my muscles a bit. Pushups! Ready, go! Woohoo! I did a pushup! Hey, I know, I'll do another one! Aw yeah! I can totally do pushups! Did everybody see me do pushups? Want to watch me do it again? Yay, I love sports!"

The next time one was hit to a fielder, he tripped, another guy tripped, the first guy tripped again, and then they apparently started some kind of slap fight while the batter laughed his way back to home plate. Then one of my fielders ran for the ball and suddenly decided to become Muslim and realized it was time to praise Allah as he knelt on the ground facing Mecca. The next time, a fielder ran toward the ball to catch it, then suddenly stopped and thought, "Wait a minute... what's the point of catching the ball? What's the point of this game? What's the point of existence? Hey look, there's a birdy flying over there. I wonder if it sees a bug it's about to eat. Mmm, I'm hungry. I wonder if there will be hot dogs after this game. I like hot dogs. I hope there's relish."

Eventually, it was my team's turn to bat. The batting tutorial taught how to swing, how to hit grounders, how to swing hard and fast in hopes of a home run, and how to bunt. I turned out to be as bad at swinging a bat in the game as I am in real life, and I practiced a lot before I told the game I was ready to begin the second half of the inning. Jack was surprised that I actually practiced. He said that he had skipped the tutorial because he wanted to just get to playing. I was feeling pretty confident that at least the batting controls would be pretty easy for me, assuming I could connect with the ball.

As it turns out, the batting wasn't as hard as the base running, which I wasn't given a tutorial for. I hit a pitch way out to center field, it bounced off the wall, got past the fielder, and came to rest before it was recovered, and the runner made it to first base and decided to have a tea party there instead of trying for at least a double. The next guy hit a single, but decided he wanted to try for an inside the park home run. At one point, I had runners on second and third, the batter hit the ball, and the runner at second decided to stay where he was, while the batter decided to go hang out with the second base runner. "Hi! Look at me! I hit the ball! Let's high five! Hey, look, the guy who recovered the ball is coming for a high five too! What a good sport he is! High five, dude on the other team!" Another time, my batter hit what should have been a good solid double. He rounded first, kept going past second, got halfway to third, then realized he had gone too far and decided to go back. He turned around and sprinted back to second base... then tried to run all the way back to first and got tagged out by the first baseman.

 We lost the game, but by golly, my team sure had fun.