I've been re-reading one of my favorite books about Baseball - albeit the somewhat different Japanese version - You Gotta Have Wa...and the author was describing how in Japan, foul balls are obediently returned to the ushers, who are mostly, he reports, not very nice about enforcing compliance with the rule.
I was just thinking about how the average Japanese Baseball fan would probably be flabbergasted by the way American teams and individual players normally let a fan keep a bat that goes into the stands. It seems like about ninety percent of the time, the player won't even bother trying to get it back, and when they do, they nearly always have the batboy run and get another one to trade.
I've heard about some Rookie League or low-A teams that were so cash-strapped that they had somebody from the team or stadium going out into the seats to demand foul balls be returned...and I've seen it first-hand at some independent league games. On the other hand, I've been attending some games put on by the new Freedom Pro Baseball League, here in Arizona, and I've so far collected, in seven games, seventeen foul balls and a ground-rule double. That's not even counting the one that left the stadium and went through the back window of my Nissan Maxima last Wednesday night. (I wonder, if that had happened in Japan, whether I'd be expected to return it.)
I was just thinking about how the average Japanese Baseball fan would probably be flabbergasted by the way American teams and individual players normally let a fan keep a bat that goes into the stands. It seems like about ninety percent of the time, the player won't even bother trying to get it back, and when they do, they nearly always have the batboy run and get another one to trade.
I've heard about some Rookie League or low-A teams that were so cash-strapped that they had somebody from the team or stadium going out into the seats to demand foul balls be returned...and I've seen it first-hand at some independent league games. On the other hand, I've been attending some games put on by the new Freedom Pro Baseball League, here in Arizona, and I've so far collected, in seven games, seventeen foul balls and a ground-rule double. That's not even counting the one that left the stadium and went through the back window of my Nissan Maxima last Wednesday night. (I wonder, if that had happened in Japan, whether I'd be expected to return it.)
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