Today in American exports

So the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees played a game of American baseball in London yesterday, although it was more like slow-pitch softball than the real thing. This will happen when the teams combine for 37 hits and put up a football score (17-13), which happens in baseball only when the wind's blowing a gale toward Lake Michigan in Wrigley, and a couple of minor-league callups are on the bump.

In any case, the Brits must have been curious, not to say confused. After all, they've seen American football, even if sometimes it was the Browns or Jaguars before they got halfway good. Yankees 17, Red Sox 13 must have seemed weirdly familiar, and prompted more than one furrowed brow.

"Where are the space helmets and shoulder pads  that make them all look like Quasimodo?" they no doubt said. "And where is the wee lad who comes on periodically to kick the ball toward the post thingies?"

Not helping matters, of course, is the fact that MLB's timing for this exhibition was passing strange. It happened right in the middle of the cricket world championships, which are also happening in England right now. Baseball, of course, is the bastard cousin of cricket, which is incomprehensible to anyone not born in England or its former colonies.

Its scoring would have stumped Pythagoras. Its terminology is Martian, or perhaps Klingonese. There's a position called the "silly mid-off." There's a pitcher's delivery called a "wicked googly." And if the googly is particularly wicked, batters occasionally find themselves "out for a Golden Duck."

How's American baseball compete with that? Particularly when its first showing overseas ends in such a profoundly un-baseball score?

"Which one is Tom Brady?" someone is saying now, as Aaron Judge comes to the plate.

"I believe he's that big chap," someone replies, pointing at Judge.

Yeesh.