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Отправлено: 14.10.08 07:25. Заголовок: Moscow News
Discovering Russian Baseball
http://mnweekly.rian.ru/columnists/20080724/55338802.html
24/07/2008
My first response on hearing that Russian baseball may be in trouble was simple: there's baseball in Russia? In my American vision of the world, Russia was among the countries that didn't get it, was one of those places where they probably shouldn't even bother to sell baseball bats because they always seemed to end up being used as clubs in hooligan melees. Turns out, America's "national pasttime" has reached even further than I had realized or expected.
It seems that Russia's small community of baseball lovers endures, and their teams have even made re spectable showings in international tournaments. This isn't surprising: Russians have a knack for picking up sports and ex celling at them. Just look at what they've accomplished in ice hockey. But the problem this year is that the Russian national team failed to make the Beijing Olympics, which will be the last time the game will be featured as an Olympic sport.
"I really fear that baseball will soon die as a sport in this country," Russian baseball federation vice-president Dmitry Kiselev told Reuters last week. "In Russia, most of the money is spent on sports that are a part of the Olympic program, others get very little, and since we didn't qualify for Beijing in baseball or softball, the funding will be cut drastically."
The development puts in jeopardy a project that began with glasnost in the 1980s, when the sport first arrived. It apparently made some inroads, and even was enshrined with the ultimate sports fad honor of being the subject of a cheesy feel-good sports flick. The 1992 film The Comrades of Summer stars Joe Mantegna as a down-on-his-luck manager who heads east to manage the Soviet Olympic team. I'm glad that the sport itself lasted longer than the memory of this awful movie.
Anyways, baseball has manufactured for itself a very convincing mythology surrounding its singular role in American life and culture, built out of its colorful history, larger than life characters, folktales and tall tales. Legally, it holds a singular place: professional baseball, amazingly, has an antitrust exemption that dates from a Supreme Court ruling in the 1922. In many ways, it reflects the country's ideals rather than its realities, in its subtleness, its balance between collective and individual effort.
But while I can appreciate its universal values, there are plenty of esoteric aspects of it that would seem to limit its broader appeal. Unlike the "put a playing piece in a goal" sports, baseball's rules can't be grasped simply by watching it for awhile. Through the years, it has evolved its own language of "Bronx cheers," "Baltimore chops" and "Texas leaguers." And as every non-fan will point out - and every honest fan will grudgingly admit - its ponderously slow pace can be out and out stupifying at times.
And yet, it has managed to find niches big and small around the world. It is easily the most popular sport in Cuba, the Dominican Republic produces many of the best players in the world, and Japan and South Korea - along with their fanatic fans - have made major contributions to the game. I don't know that they consider it "America's pasttime" alone.
A big part of it seems to be the ubiquity of ball and stick games. Besides baseball, people around the world play cricket, stickball and Russia's own contribution, lapta. The game dates back to the 14th century, and it involves teams of up to ten players. The ball is "pit ched" by being gently tossed in the air right in front of the batter, who uses a variety of different types of swing to whack the ball, as depending on the situation - varying from overhead smashes to a between-the-legs upper-cut. Runs are scored by having others players cross the field and are put "out" by getting hit by the ball being thrown from one of the fielders.
Like most of these ball and stick games many cultures dream up, it has elements that strongly resemble baseball. Enough so that enthusiasts sometimes go so far as to insist there is a causal link. But to me, it sounds much more like cricket than baseball.
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem that telekanal Sport is too eager to begin showing lapta, or baseball, for that matter. It's a pretty crowded marketplace after all - and the flavor of the month is definitely football after Euro 2008. But you have to think that at some level, baseball, or lapta, will remain somewhere on the Russian field of dreams.
By Christopher Marcisz
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