Baseball in Singapore

Last night we went to a baseball game...in Singapore. If you have never left the United States, you might not understand that the rest of the world simply does not care about baseball. At all. Other than the Dominican Republic and Japan, maybe. No one talks about it, no one knows the rules. No one cares.

Luckily in Singapore, there is a whole American world. Matt and I met up with Dheeraj and went to meet Aliza, Linton and their son Zack at the American School. The entire experience was so so weird, but we had a great night.

First, we drove for what seemed like 35 minutes (and may have been) on highway. Singapore is small. You don't usually think that you can drive for that long before you hit Malaysia. Dheeraj wondered if he needed a visa. We arrived in the area, drove through what seemed like a normal Singapore neighborhood, and then all of the sudden there is an American looking school. It's huge, really nice, and it feels like America. The weird thing for me was that it really seemed like something I was familiar with, but definitely not in Michigan (smelled too tropical, and just way too warm), so I supposed it was like a school in Florida, though I have never been to a high school in Florida. After we walked by a whole bunch of soccer fields, we reached the baseball field, under the lights.

We watched the varsity baseball team kick the crap out of the adults men team. The first three innings were scoreless (or maybe 1 run?), and then the little guys started running ahead with a super exciting grand slam. I think the final score was something like 13 to 0.

The game was more like an event. They had things going on all over the place. The kids Zack's age (on his team) were getting their heads shaved. One little nine year old girl sang a song (I can't remember which), and it was unbelievable. They had a lottery drawings between every inning. They had dance performers. They had contests...no one was bored. I even at Cracker Jacks (Dheeraj ate peanuts, so we could officially sing "take me out to the ballgame...").

The whole night was surreal and a bit out of body - since it was all Americans, it was baseball, there were hot dogs and other American things, but we were in Singapore.

Best line from the night: "I've never won anything other than a frozen chicken at a Purim carnival! And it wasn't even a whole chicken. Just the breasts." This was after Aliza won a cooking class for 30 apparently worth S$1,800.