TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME
Baseball, like Mickey Mouse and the cowboy hat, is one of THE American institutions. St Louis likes to regard itself as America's number one baseball city.
They are crazy about the game there and boast one of the best teams there is in the St Louis Cardinals.
The fantastic guys from the mens senior baseball league decided that the record for the world's longest baseball
marathon needed to be held in St Louis. A terrifying target of just over 30 hours had been set in Nebraska last year
and these bad boys wanted to shoot it down!
The two teams were allowed 20 players each and crucially all members of the teams had to be present for the whole
period whether on the field or not. These players would need some stamina and a lot of caffeine! Official umpires were
present and the game took place in a lovely minor league stadium just outside the city. All sponsorship proceeds were
going to a famous boys club in the city that helps underpriviliged kids.
I arrived around lunchtime They'd been playing for 5 hours already. Worryingly it was raining and the groundsman was talking about stopping the game. This would have meant disaster and the end of the attempt but luckily the rain cleared away after a couple of hours. I viewed the video of the start and checked all the time keeping equipment and log books
and all was well.
As these guys batted on through the night they continued to show a real passion and dedication to the sport -
remaining very competitive. They all went a little crazy at around 2am and started shouting at each other but all in
the spirit of the game! They all looked exhausted in the morning. The sun was now shining and a decent crowd had
arrived making for a great atmosphere as they closed in on the record.
Everyone was so genuinely excited and appreciative of me coming all the way from London to be there it was almost
overwhelming. I spent a lot of the day doing interviews with the local tv, radio and papers. The rest of the day was
spent watching baseball in the sunshine and chatting away to hundreds of people who all wanted me to pose for pictures
with their families, get me to speak to them in 'that cute English way'.
When they broke the Nebraska record a huge cheer went up and I got to announce it on the stadium PA 'and now all the way from London, England'. They then played on for a further two and a half hours setting a new record of 32 hrs 29 min 25 seconds. Big emotional hugs all round and I got on the field with the certificate and did a little speech of
admiration for these amazingly committed players. They gave me a signed bat, ball and shirt which was great. We had a
few beers in the locker room and I regailed the players with tales of crazy record holders and tried to explain the
rules of cricket to them for a while.
Then my moment arrived - I got Larry the baseball coach to pitch to me on the actual stadium field and I hit a
couple of balls with my new bat. It was totally awesome! Larry said I had good hands which I guess is a good thing. I
am now considering leaving Guinness World Records to become a star batsman for the St Louis Cardinals.
16 October 2007