Reese Kaplan -- Suppose You Never Saw a Baseball Game Played

Many of you are aware that when I was ready to give up working I relocated overseas to Malaysia for an early retirement from day-to-day working and living most recently in El Paso, Texas. Living here is a constant series of adjustments as things are simply not the way they were in the USA, but it's all part of the adventure.

(No, that's not me nor my actual collection)

I recently got a whole new introduction to Malaysian culture when folks visited my home where I was proudly showing off a now much smaller collection of baseball memorabilia that includes autographed baseballs, photographs (several also with autographs), framed yearbooks and other things that have intrinsic value to any lifelong baseball fan.

The first thing was politely instructing a neighbor from across the way that his son was probably not wise to play with a baseball as it is hard, doesn't really bounce and it could ruin the signature of some guy named Stan Musial if it was handled a bit too much. I then had to launch into an explanation of who Stan Musial was, what it meant to be a great hitter and why I would place value on the ink to horsehide that was well over 60 years old.

Little did I know that this discussion would then morph into a whole lesson in the sport of baseball, why there was no up and down struggle for position and goals on a playing field and why there was no clock to determine the length of the match or when was the last chance to score. In dealing with vendors who did me wrong I know I'm a holy terror with no patience whatsoever, but in this educational lecture I found myself willing to sit back and take as long as it was necessary to make people who never grew up with the crack of the bat, the sound of the ball thumping leather and what the long 162 game season meant until they started to understand.

Think about that for a moment...how would you go about first explaining baseball to someone who never saw it, never experienced Little League games themselves or who never stood shivering in April or October over the outcomes of games.

Put another way, imagine as an American being asked to appreciate the tournament level play in the sport of competitive badminton (yes, it is like Wimbledon here for that particular sport) or in other geographic locations how to appreciate games like jai alai or cricket. That's how weird and unconventional baseball was to my south Asian audience.

When it got even stranger was when I revealed to everyone that I wrote about the game we love four times per week here at Macks Mets. They all were impressed that I was publishing writing yet aghast when I said I was doing it as a hobby and not as a source of income. While I'm sure Mack, Tom and the others might spring for a can of Coke Zero for me if ever we were to meet together in person, it is much more important to me to help continue the fascination with the game for people who know it inside out and backwards.

Now it appears that one of my duties as an American living in Malaysia is to expand the enthusiasm and knowledge about the game to a new breed of first timers who are ripe for the information about something they simply never encountered.

As I so often end columns, play ball!