Originally Posted by
Hillbilly Jim
for real guys if you dont stop being so fucking boring im gonna start reading a book tomorrow
"Baseball," said the Englishman, "is an excellent game, no doubt. I can hear that smack of 'the pellet' in my palm, and almost feel it too. But aren't you a little unfair in taking all the credit for the game and calling it American? Shouldn't you mention the fact that baseball comes straight out of cricket, which is a wholly English game?
"I'd mention it," replied the American after a moment of deliberation, "if it weren't for one thing - the fatal flaw in cricket, which, to my mind, puts it right out of consideration."
"What is that?"
"Simply the fact that no one understands it, I mean knows what it is."
"You mean no one in the United States?"
"No, no. I mean no one at all, anywhere. Just between you and me, I don't think cricket has ever been played."
"What are you talking about?"
"It's my belief that at some time in the past an Englishman may have had the idea of a game to be played with bats and balls. He started to explain it - as many Englishmen have done to their American friends - but he couldn't go on. It was too complicated. What saved him and his idea was that he was talking to fellow Englishmen. They hate theory anyway, so they went ahead and got bats and balls - of sorts - and to oblige their friend, they stood around with them, running here and there very quietly from time to time, making believe they were playing the game. That's how the tradition started."
"What tradition? I'm lost!"
"The tradition that cricket is the national game and that every Englishman loves it. In a sense he does love it. 'Playing the game' means he wouldn't do a thing to dispel the general impression that there is such a thing - it's an exact parallel to what they call the British Constitution."
"You're pulling my leg. There is such a game."
"I assure you there isn't. You'll admit, surely, a thing that everybody knows, namely, that Englishmen don't know when they're beaten? Well, that follows logically from the fact that Englishmen don't know when they're playing. Name me another game than cricket which you don't know you're playing when you are?"
"You're juggling with words!"
"And you're blinding yourself to the evidence. Is it likely that people capable of inventing a game would make it consist of such objects as sticky wickets, creases, fast bowlers, overs, and centuries? One of their terms gives the show away: every so often they have a Test Match - it's to find out whether the game is possible or not."
"What do you suppose happens then?"
"After a few days on the field, the excitement dies down. The issue remains in doubt. Meantime - and this is conclusive - every British subject has a perfect right to say to any other: 'This isn't cricket.' How do you reconcile that with a set of rules for an actual game?"
"B-b-but, you can't be serious. I can make allowances for the fact that you've never seen a cricket match but you must have read about the game in Punch If you can't follow the sense of it, there must be some reliable source-"
"Would the Encyclopaedia Britannica do?"
"Certainly."
"Well then. Get hold of the last British or fourteenth edition and look up cricket. What do you find? The history of the local clubs. Names of great figures. Older and modern style - style, mind you! Not a single word about the rules or who does what. No diagram, even - in an encyclopedia too. But no wonder - it's as I told you. The best you can hope for is that by watching our G.I.'s play baseball, some of your brighter fellows will find a way to make cricket come out. Compared to a real game it's in the chrysalis state."
Excerpted from: God's Country and Mine
A declaration of love spiced with a few harsh words.
By Jacques Barzun
1954
If you guys dont start posting
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