"It measures just nine inches in circumference, weighs only about five ounces, and it's made of cork wound with woolen yarn, covered with two layers of cowhide, and stiched by hand precisely 216 times.
It travels 60 feet 6 inches from the pitcher's mound to home--and it can cover that distance at nearly 100 miles an hour. Along the way it can be made to twist, spin, curve, wobble, rise, or fall away.
The bat is made of turned ash, less than 42 inches long, not more than 2-3/4 inches in diameter. The batter has only a few thousandths of a second to decide to hit the ball. And yet the men who fail seven times out of ten are considered the game's greatest heroes.
It is played everywhere. In parks and playgrounds and prison yards. In back alleys and farmers' fields. By small children and by old men. By raw amateurs and millionare professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed. The only game where the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.
Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years, while they conquered a continent, warred with one another and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights and the meaning of freedom.
At the games's heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game, born in crowded cities; an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating and has excluded as many as it has included; a profoundly conservative game that sometimes manages to be years ahead of its time.
It is an American odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers. And it reflects a host of age-old American tensions: between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective.
It is a haunted game, where each player is measured by the ghosts of those who have gone before. Most of all, it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home."
"Baseball"
Written By: Ken Burns and Geoffry C. Ward
Spoken by Narrator: John Chancellor
Loss to Carver Ends Hollanders Season
Posted August 06, 2018
The first game on Sunday during the 2018 7C Regional tournament in Waconia saw an elimination game against the Carver Black Sox and the Cologne Hollanders. Before the weekend started rain was in the forecast for the entirety of Saturday and Sunday. Other than a delay Friday night, the rain held on a...
Plato Beats Cologne
Posted August 03, 2018
Last night's game was the first game played in the 2018 7C Regional Tournament that saw No. 8 Cologne Hollanders facing off against the No. 1 Plato Bluejays. Although Cologne was the lower seed they have been playing well as of late. They had hoped to roll the momentum from the St Boni series in...
Hollanders Advance to Regions
Posted July 30, 2018
With all other series in the CRVL playoffs already wrapped up, the game with St Boni Saints versus the Cologne Hollanders was the only game being played on Sunday. With Cologne winning game one on Tuesday and St Boni taking game two on Thursday, that means it was a do-or-die scenario for both clubs....
