"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
Cologne Can't Hold on Against Watertown
Posted May 25, 2018
The boys let another slip away last night in the late night nail biter against Watertown. The early evening monsoon ended up delaying the game until an hour, but that didn't stop the Hollanders from putting up one run in the top of the first. After Casey Clemenson singled to left, Time Swanson s...
Fireworks Postponed
Posted May 17, 2018
Due to the dry conditions the Fireworks at Fritz Field event will be postponed to a later date. The game against the Young America Cardinals will still go on, though. The Cardinals will be playing the Hollanders at Fritz Field with a start time of 7:30pm. Although there won't be any fireworks, t...
2018 Season is Around the Corner
Posted January 12, 2018
As the weather outside starts to get bitter cold, the Cologne Hollanders are looking forward to the days without snow and the start of the 2018 season. The preliminary Crow River Valley League schedule has been released. All games are important, but there are a few that are worth mentioning right aw...
