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.
I’m on my honeymoon in Vietnam this week. We have a weekend off anyway. Absent the stimulating simulata of Belgian baseball, and my gentlemanly unwillingness to ruin the bliss of a young marriage, this column was mailed in last week. Its preoccupation is an amusing conversational game that challenges participants to use their imagination to respond to hypothetical baseball situations. It seems to be a favorite of baseball nuts everywhere, a consequence of the game’s ample bench and bleacher time for debate. Here are my best:
- Can anybody throw 2 strikes at the same time with 2 balls, one with each arm?
- Can Randy Johnson (substitute any hard thrower you choose) strike you out from behind the mound?
- Could the 9 best female ballplayers, playing baseball, win the Belgian 1st division?
- Could the Yankees beat the Kangaroos playing opposite handed, pitching, fielding and hitting?
- Could the Yankees beat the Kangaroos if they had to play totally naked, except for gloves and equipment?
- Could the Yankees beat the Kangaroos if they weren’t allowed to wear baseball gloves (including the catcher) and they had to bat opposite-handed?
- Could you strike out Barry Bonds if you could ride a motor cycle from centre field to the pitcher’s mound at 80 mph and throw the ball when you reached the mound, then veer out his way?
- Could the best fungo hitter in the world win a Belgian d2 game hitting pitches from the mound?
- How close would you have to stand to strike out Barry Bonds?
- Could Derek Jeter play better shortstop than you on his knees? On one leg?
- If the Brazilian national soccer team practiced baseball for a whole year, where would they fare in the Belgian first division?
- Could a team of the best high school players in the world beat the worst Major League team once if given 162 games to do so?
- How would the Australian national cricket team do in the Belgian 1st Division?
- If Kangaroo-Field was on the Jupiter, would Barry Bonds be able to hit a HR over the Left Field fence? To RF?
- If you redirected all the economic, scientific (all drugs allowed) and political efforts of the human race, for 50 years, to creating the perfect baseball team, could they go 162-0 in the major leagues? (Bear in the mind: this mean you’d get the best athletes from every society and train them with sick drugs and gene therapy for 3 generations.)
Email your best baseball hypothetical’s 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
Baseball in the (very early) morning
Who do the Angels root for?
Does your Fastball smoke?