Cultural exchanges

 Caught part of the London Series game between the Cubs and Cardinals yesterday, and again it got me thinking what the Brits think of our National Past (Its) Time. I'm guessing they'd respond that a brisk game of rounders is fine with them.

Although the haughtier sort (these are Brits, after all) would no doubt sniff, "Well, it's not exactly cricket, is it?"

No, it's not. And England isn't America, which is why the Cubs and Cardinals gawked like proper bumpkins at Westminster Abbey and Big Ben and the Tower London and all the other old stuff they got to see on their visit.

"That's where Anne Boleyn was beheaded!" Cardinals shortstop Paul DeJong exclaimed of the Tower. "And we were standing right there today!"

And, OK, so he didn't say it exactly like that. But he did seem pretty stoked to be at the site of an historic dismemberment.

Which is to say, the baseball players loved London. But what did the Brits think about their game?

Well, both games were sellouts, so I guess they must have liked it OK. And yet I can't but wonder how many of those in attendance were actually locals and not American tourists, and what questions they might have been asking about our distant cousin to their cricket.

"Which player is the silly mid-off?" might have been one, referring to an actual cricket position.

Or; "You mean the bowler, I mean, pitcher, doesn't get a running start? Hardly seems fair."

Or: "Why is the beer so cold? And where's the mash to go with this banger-in-a-roll?"

They might also have wondered which team was the Yankees, and why there must be a lot of bearcubs in Chicago, because why else would its baseball team be called the Cubs? Ditto for Cardinals in St. Louis.

Also, why do they call it a curveball when it's clearly a wicked googly?

And then Ian Happ homered in his first two at-bats in the first game of the Series, and all of that went away, presumably.

"Ian! Now that's a proper name," someone surely said.

And then: "Wonder if he could play silly mid-off?"