"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
Hollanders Send Draftees to State
Posted August 14, 2017
Although the Cologne Hollanders' hopes of making the state tournament were cut short after the two losses to Winsted in the Crow River Valley League (CRVL) Playoffs two weeks ago, the CRVL has picked up not one, not two, not three, but four Hollander pitchers during the league draft. Kyle Brazil...
Hollanders Can't Hold on Against Winsted
Posted July 31, 2017
Last Friday night the Cologne Hollanders traveled to Winsted to play the Wildcats for the second game of the three game playoff series. Cologne needed the win to stay alive for the 2017 season and it appeared that would be the case. Cologne was up 1-0 for most of the game as they scored the run in t...
Hollander Drop Game One to Winsted
Posted July 27, 2017
The road to regions just got a little bit harder for the Cologne Hollanders after last night's 5-2 loss to the Winsted Wildcats. The Wildcats jumped out in front in the top of the first inning as the lead-off hitter drew a walk and the textbook bunt, get him over, base hit scored the first run. ...
