So a few weeks ago, September 23rd to be precise, we had our first English class event! As you have probably already guessed, due to the title of this post, we did indeed play baseball. But to keep things interesting, there was a twist! A twist you say? What kind of twists might there be in a simple game of baseball? Well, let me take you back to the very beginning of the idea, and the twist will reveal itself.
(Not to get your hopes up for a big twist or anything…I realize I may have built up the suspense too much. So if you’re prepping for a M. Night Shyamalan twist, relax!)
The summer here was very warm…one might even say hot…actually very hot, and very humid. It was not unusual for it to be 30 degrees Celsius (85 degrees Fahrenheit for all my Americans) by 9 or 10 o’clock in the morning, so when I walked out of my apartment already sweating, I am hit with the reality that its still morning, and still many more hours for it to keep heating up, and it did! But, I enjoyed the heat. Coming from the Northwest, we rarely get to experience a truly hot summer. Anhywho, after spending all this time outside I thought that it would be fun to have an English event where my students have an opportunity to come and bring some friends and we could play a beloved game in Japan, which happens to be Americas past time, baseball. This could be a good fun event that has elements of North American culture, so the planning began.
Basically all the planning that I needed to do was to find a date that did not conflict with anything that the church was doing. We picked September 23. I made flyers then passed them on to Yoko who translated it into Japanese so that people could actually read it. As the day drew closer, we still did not really have a good idea of who or how many people were going to come. Looking back, it would have been much easier to plan the food and drinks if I had put something on their where they could write their name down, how many people were coming and then give it back to me…rookie mistake.
The week of the big game, I went out into our little field and set up some nets to make a homerun fence, oh, and by the way, this is a wiffle ball baseball game…forgot to mention that little detail. The week was sunny and beautiful. The field looked great, but then it happened. Freakin’ rain! It started raining the night of the 22nd and rained hard all through the night and the whole morning of the game. So we had to call an audible.
Time for Operation, convert the church sanctuary into a workable baseball diamond. I was so lucky to have many hands help set up, help make decisions, and I’ll admit it, make the day run smoothly. The day before, Yoko, Junko and I ran out and picked up some pretzels, chips, candy for 25 people. With this rain, we weren’t even sure if we were going to any anyone else there other then the 10 helpers. But, when 1:00 came around, people started trickling in. The final count was 25 people. It was relatively small group of people, but a great group of people. We played 2 games, each were 6 innings. Oh, and I had the idea of tying the base runners feet together so they could only hop between bases, rather then take 4 huge strides to get there.
So, my original plan of having a fun summer wiffle ball game outside in beautiful weather was struck by the cold reality that September 23 is not summer here, but fall, and the possibility of rain is very real. But in the end, we had some good tunes playing, we were still able to have an announcer announce the next batter, and we still had a score-board with score keepers. But most of all, we still had lots of fun and people left with smiles on their faces.
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