SF Giants v Colorado Rockies

Take me out to the ball game!

Today’s #travelpics feature will be short – we are supposed to be on the road again in 15 minutes and I have yet to finish packing up for the next leg of our trip – but I give you “The American Game”.

Maybe.

Baseball has long been considered an allegory for American life – a game that was invented in America, and which is all about the great American ideals: individuality and yet requiring teamwork, anyone can play and achieve greatness without being a physical freak, the result can turn on a single great play .. and yet he heroes can be flawed: consider the legend of the young boy and “Shoeless Joe Jackson”.

Jackson was a player with the Chicago White Socks, who (in 1919) threw the World Series by allowing Cincinnati to score runs they shouldn’t have – in a betting scandal that rocked the game.

The story goes that a young lad waiting outside the courthouse where Jackson had admitted his part asked, plaintively, “Say it ain’t so, Joe”.

In fact, Jackson’s testimony wasn’t quite an admission of guilt – and the scene with the young lad simply never happened.

But it was too good a story not to repeat and it became both a part of Baseball’s lore, and the shared American experience.

And maybe THAT says something about America, as well.

None of which has anything to do with the SF Giants playing the Colorado Rockies, as seen in today’s pic.

This was my first Major League Baseball game – and it was a rout. The Giants walloped the Rockies 12-3.