Take Me Out to the Ball Game

Because it was Australia Day weekend, we decided to do something in support of the country we reside in: go to a baseball game. Of course I'm joking. Baseball is completely un-Australian. The cricket rules as the bat and ball sport here. But there is a professional baseball league, and the Perth Heat had their last few games of the season at home. I'm no baseball fan, but I enjoy the 1 or 2 games a year for the atmosphere. Plus, I considered it part of my "research".

A baseball game is incomplete without the signing of the national anthem. How else do they know it's time to "Play ball!"? But since the Australian national anthem (that whole Advance Australia Fair thing, remember from last entry? ;)) is usually only reserved for grand final sporting events, we were ready to do without. But the Perth Heat did not disappoint. Not only did we have the anthem, but we had someone singing it live. I must say, it did feel strange to stand up and not hear, "O Say can you see".

However, they did fill the rest of the gaps with extra "American" music. It's one of the first times I've hear Big and Rich's "Save a Horse" in public in Australia and one fan did a very enthusiastic rendition of the YMCA. We even sang "Take me out to the ball game" during the 7th inning stretch. And by "we" I really mean Kyla, Amanda and I and the two other people paying attention.

I think those other people standing are just getting another beer.

There were suprisingly more people than we all expected. Yes, it was a smaller stadium and fewer people than a Gamecock, two time national champions, college team, but this IS Australia!

 The game was a bit slow, and I think Perth ended up losing to the Adelaide Bite.

And they did well in all things American baseball. We had hotdogs and beer.What else could you want? Well they didn't have peanuts, let alone boiled ones...

 

And they had mascots. Three of them. And they raced around the bases (the Hot Dawg tripped Flash the Baseball in quite a dirty dog move).

 

We did get a reminder how not big baseball is in Australia when we tried to take the bus home. This city has an entire train stop for the Perth Showgrounds (where the fair is once a year), and special buses from the city to the horse races. However, when trying to get less than 10k from the baseball stadium back to the city at 9:30 pm on a Friday night, good luck! Turns out the buses stop running. Amanda and I had a lovely 5k summer evening stroll to the "main" road to catch the last 212 bus back into the city. But that's just part of the adventure.