Baseball in the (very early) morning – a Baseball Blog by John Miller

John Miller, head coach of the Brussels Kangaroos and a reporter for a major American newspaper, is chronicling his team’s 2008 season in a column that will appear every Monday on mister-baseball.com. It is the first of several Mister-Baseball Blogs this year.

We took another sweep on the chin this weekend (11-0 and 8-3). The Hoboken Pioneers, the Goliath du jour, pitch, hit and catch the ball with the best of them. Most of their players are in their 20s, a generation more experienced than my teen-based squad.

That wraps up our three-week stretch of playing the league’s top teams. Next week, we take on Namur. The season is structured so that the teams are split in half after 14 games. The top 6 play off against each other for the national title. The bottom 2 play a season with the top 4 teams of the second division. The top 2 teams in that league play in first division in 2009.

Obviously, our goal is to make the playoffs, but my wider goal is to ease our young team into playing at a higher level, against grown men with wooden bats. The Belgian first division might not be the pros, but it’s better, and more challenging, than most American high school leagues.

Meanwhile, I’ve received some unexpected pleasure from another source of baseball fascination. My Baltimore Orioles are 11-8. They don’t have any big names. An aging Kevin Millar bats cleanup. Instead, they have a critical mass of young talent, acquired in smart trades for superstars Erik Bedard and Miguel Tejada.

It is not yet May. The O’s could well collapse, like they did in 2005. But if there’s one thing a life as a baseball nut in Belgium ingrains in you, it’s the fixation on daily scores from April to October, and the joy of following favorite team.

It might not have been the case if I were into the wired world. But I grew up in the 1980s. I couldn’t shoot up with baseball scores online. Watching games was a fantasy. I drank my nutty compulsion in various forms: books my uncles mail me (I read Bill James at age 9); audio tapes my grandfather sent me; write-ups in the International Herald Tribune and radio broadcasts on Armed Forces Network Radio.

As a teenager, I usually woke up, by instinct, around 2 a.m. AFN relayed a game almost every night. I never had a copy of the schedule, so I didn’t know who was playing. If it was the Orioles, I kicked myself out of bed and into listening mode. It involved soda, snacks and plenty of pacing. O’s announcer Jon Miller’s silky tones would nurse me through the night. Around 6 a.m., the signal would start to break up. I often missed the end of long games.

Winning games and seasons (1989!) filled me with joy. The Orioles’s recent ineptitude depresses me.

My Belgian friends have even more insane stories of fandom. They once figured out how to catch AFN television on an antenna hooked up to a black and white TV. Problem was, the only place the signal really worked was in a particular place in the equipment shed. And so they took in the 1995 World Series huddled next to the rakes and bats.

Last week, we got some beers and gathered at the apartment of Manu, our centerfielder. We watched Braves-Nationals on a plat-panel TV wired to his computer. The colors were sharp and clear. We went home before the game ended.

What’s your craziest story about following Major League Baseball from afar? Write to oldworldpastime@gmail.com

Previous Columns:
Playing and Coaching in Europe
My Country, Delayed by Rain
Wanted: Pitcher-Shortstop-Catcher With Homerun Power
Wanna play catch?
Can I see your license?
All Success is not equal