US History as Baseball

Once upon a time, much of the world was engaged in soccer, basketball, running, ping-pong, horse-shoes and cricket. Other sports had been practised and tried at various time throughout history, and several ideas on how to work out new games were currently circulating, but for various reasons the world generally stuck to these sports.

Eventually, a group of soccer players began to get tired of playing soccer all the time. They decided to try a system of baseball, which was mostly on paper and had been tried in bits and pieces in other times and places. Thirteen teams soon decided to play baseball for good. They all chose it voluntarily and agreed to rules and appointed referees and officials from among themselves. A commissioner was also appointed but he had almost no authority – he mostly promoted the game abroad and ensured the referees were fair.

Well, suffice it to say, baseball took off. It became so popular that players of other sports began to come to the new baseball league and try and play. With them came new ideas and techniques to improve the game.

But all was not well in the league. As baseball grew in popularity, they needed more fields in which to play. The baseball players decided to play a few “night games” on neighbouring basketball courts. When the basketball players found out, they were furious and demanded that the baseball players leave. The baseball players insisted they just found them lying there and expanded their teams in number and paved over the courts with baseball fields.

In addition to this, on many of the baseball fields that were already built, runners had been exercising long before the base-ballers were there. While the base-ballers sympathised with the runners, they already had a lot invested in the baseball fields, and had improved them dramatically. The baseball players, without the approval of the runners, relegated them to a couple of the worst fields and pretended that everything was better, and that they were good people for doing it. Afterall, running is not as complex and sophisticated as baseball!

Some of the baseball teams, many of them quite popular and profitable, soon realised that they might like to change the rules a little. They wanted to try out softball. It had not been too long since the baseball league was founded, and it had been set up with their consent, so they sought to set up a softball league in the same way. However, the other teams were not happy about this – saying it was bad for the sport overall. The integrity of baseball itself was at stake if these teams made a softball league. A scuffle broke out with each side fighting. Soon, the base-ballers held a press conference to announce that the soft-ballers had ball-boys that were not getting paid. They proclaimed that everyone should support them in the scuffle. That this scuffle was now about (and had always been about) ensuring fair treatment for the ball-boys, and nothing to do with softball, didn’t seem to matter anymore. The base-ballers won the scuffle but the ball-boys were paid very little of what they were promised and the sport of softball was always linked with poor ball-boy pay, relegated to shame. The base-ballers invented new rules that no separate leagues could be formed, and that the baseball commissioner would be given wide powers to ensure unity in the league.

It took the league some time to get over the scuffle. Even many games after, base-ballers were beaming soft-ballers and vica versa.

One day, the commissioner decided that the league needed expansion. He assumed that many of the soccer players in the soccer league might like to join the league. After all, the sport had become a little violent and the team captains were pretty much running the show. Surely a better sport like baseball would be welcomed.

The baseball league forced their way onto the soccer fields one day, the commissioner explaining that soccer’s vestige of power in team captains was abusive to the other players. The most dominant soccer team came to blows with them on the field. Some of the other soccer teams, jealous of this teams recent dominance (despite the fact that they had been dominant at various times in the past) helped the baseball players and the tide was turned. The dominant team was forced to rejoin the soccer league with their worst players only being allowed to play. Team captains were abolished.

Eventually, women were allowed to play baseball.

After the fight with the soccer teams, baseball flourished again. The commissioner declared that baseball had hit a new plateau and it would never fall!

But soon after saying this, the baseball players had began to get tired. After so many fights and brawls, they just didn’t have it in them to play the sport anymore. Moreover, many of them had been forced to play baseball per the new rules after that whole softball fiasco. Their bodies just weren’t able to keep up the frantic pace. The commissioner tried everything to energise them, lighter bats and balls, smaller fields. The next commissioner decided that they could get a higher amount of good players by forcing the best players to take time off to train the players on the poorer teams. There was some improvement in the worst players, but the best players were exhausted even more, many of them collapsed on the field. Fan support dried up.

The commissioner, out of desperation, again called on the baseball players to abandon baseball for a time to expand the league into the soccer fields. The formerly dominant soccer team had been secretly training some amazing soccer players and were flat out ignoring the soccer rules now, completely embittered against the league for their betrayal in the fight with the base-ballers. They were deliberately kicking balls at other players to try and cause them injury!

But the base-ballers did not want to go back to the soccer fields. Fortunately for the commissioner, in a neighbouring  ping-pong game, one of the players got a good whack on the ball, which sailed through the air, onto a baseball field and put the eye out of a baseball team’s coach! The commissioner didn’t hesitate – this would get those lazy baseball players to get back in shape! The commissioner required that all able-bodied baseball players take up their bats and go whack the soccer players and ping-pong players. Some began to wonder what was going on – as the baseball fields were neglected further and the best players began learning to whack people with bats instead of hitting balls and playing the sport they all used to love which encouraged so many new players rush to join them

Well, the bats were much harder than balls, so the soccer players went down quickly. Especially because the cricket players helped them out, as they wanted some of the soccer fields for cricket anyway. Baseball and cricket players became the soccer refs (despite the fact they knew little about soccer) and they enforced their rules with bats.

The ping-pong players, however, were tough. Finally, the base ball players decided on a new strategy – they poisoned the hot-dogs that the ping-pong arenas were selling. They realised that this would lead to many sick fans as well as players, but it was worth the cost. After two poisoned arenas, the ping-pong players gave in very quickly, and let the baseball players do what they liked.

Well the cricket league and the baseball league were now refereeing most of the world. Everyone wanted to get back to baseball, but the cricket and baseball players were so worried about the new aggression that each of them had cultivated that they kept training players how to whack people with bats, not balls. They often had little spats on remote fields around the world – and each league constantly threatened mass hot-dog poisonings.

Cricket, being a boring sport, eventually declined – even when their commissioner forcing the fans to watch the games with their eyes pried open. They fell asleep. And many cricket teams made their own baseball leagues on the cricket fields.

But baseball in the original league was not really being practiced anymore, they had fount it more beneficial to learn to whack people with bats. The fans found it more entertaining. Each commissioner found it more beneficial to adjust the rules in favour of whacking people rather than balls. The original rules of baseball had long since been forgotten.

Life was good again. Most of the other sports leagues were staying in line out of fear of the base-ballers and their bats. But the horse-shoers were growing discontent. Thy had been whacked a couple times by the baseball players and were secretly training to throw horse shoes at people! One day, they tossed one so hard, it went past the soccer fields and knocked some screws out of a set of stands at a baseball stadium. Before the fans could get down, the stands collapsed.

The commissioner vowed revenge on all horse-shoers, though he had no idea what specific team threw the shoe. The baseball players were sent to two hose-shoe pits and whacked the crap out of any horse-shoers they found there. They expected to find the matching horse shoe of the one which was thrown – but no luck.

The commissioner then began to panic and wondered if the horse shoe didn’t actually come from horse shoe pits, but from a baseball dugout, or even fan stands! He decided that new baseball players should be reduced, and those who were allowed to join a team, would need to fist put in house of practice on a non-baseball field. Fans were watched to make sure they seemed like passionate supporters. Many of the teams didn’t agree with what was happening, but the comissioner had the power to set their ticket prices, so they didn’t make too large a fuss. While some of the fans were angry, most believed in what the commissioner was doing, since it was he that had made so much improvements in the facilities to watch the games and had innovated all the people-whacking techniques that now dominated the game.

Instead the players simply gave the commissioner more power to change the game as he saw fit. They had become so worried and sceptical about other sports, and many of them had lost the skills to play the sport as it used to be, and they needed the baseball to stay as it was or else they would be some of the worst players. Many of the other sports stopped innovating, fearing the commissioner.

The baseball league had become worse that the leagues which it originally left, and it was unrecognisable for those thirteen teams that originally founded it.

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