No, this is not a post about playing baseball in Spain (although there is actually a small professional league that plays a six week season in June and July). This is about watching baseball in Spain, and the difficulties of being an MLB fan in Europe.
The MLB playoffs are in full swing, and that would usually mean a lot of baseball watching for us. Unfortunately, the time difference between here and the US makes that difficult. Most games start between 10 pm and 4 am. So far, we have watched the beginning of games before going to sleep and have seen a few full games that started at 1:00 pm on the East Coast (7:00 pm here). On Tuesday morning, we woke up for school at 7:20 am and caught the last half inning of the Dodgers clinching victory over the Diamondbacks.
Tonight the Yankees and Indians play a decisive game 5 of their AL Division Series, the game starts at 2:00 am here. However, since tomorrow is a national holiday in Spain (celebrating Columbus's arrival in the "New World" and also Saint Pilar), we don't have school. So, we have decided to wake up in the morning and immediately put on the replay of the game without checking the internet. Early morning baseball!
There are so many things that we love about living here, we will just have to live with missing out on most of the MLB playoffs. Now, if the Angels make it next year, we might just have to give up sleep... ;-)
Hasta pronto,
Jeff and Shana
Let's Go Yankees!!!
ReplyDeleteOne more for the Cubbies tonight! Stay up and cheer for the Cubs!!! xoxoxo
ReplyDeleteSo, I remember once going to a Nats game with you guys and Daniel and some rookie hit for a natural cycle in his first game (including an inside the park HR) (or something really weird like that). And it turned out it had happened before. And we got in a long conversation about how rare it is for anything "new" in baseball really to happen.
ReplyDeleteWell, looks like it happened last night. There was this sequence:
"At one point four consecutive runners reached on an intentional walk, a strikeout/passed ball, a catcher interference, and a hit-by-pitch."
I read this morning that there is no evidence in some huge database of over 2 million innings of that ever happening before. I think it said that all 4 of those events have only happened in like 5 games total. And never more than 3 in the same inning, let alone consecutively.
Here's a couple of articles on that sequence:
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2017/10/12/wild-sequence-cubs-rally-never-mlb-history/
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/possible-blown-call-highlights-fifth-inning-meltdown-by-nationals-in-game-5-vs-cubs/
Yes, I read the cbs sports article. That is definitely a weird sequence that may never happen again. Then again, there are nine ways for a batter to reach base and several are rarer than those in the above sequence, so who knows what will happen next?
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