REVIEWS

"If you want to understand your new society better, you should go to a baseball game. Ignore invitations to play five-a-side soccer with fellow immigrants in that obscure park in the outskirts of town. If you really hope to become a part of society, on a Friday evening go to a nearby stadium and watch a baseball game. Sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame along with the crowd. Buy a beer and a hotdog, eat some cotton candy, try to catch the ball but do not try too hard, especially if there is a kid around you trying to catch the same ball. Do not try to understand the game. It is neither cricket nor soccer. Just sit, relax, watch the people, sip your beer, and pay a little attention to the game. The good thing is that you are not obligated to stay until the end. Leave when you become bored or tired, but you bet that you’ll learn a lot more about this society from sitting at that stadium with the smell of beer and nachos and screaming kids than you’ll learn in any other place. Go on the Internet. Read up what you can find on Shoeless Joe and Yogi Berra. Learn some Yogisms. I have never met an American who hated baseball. As tea is to the Englishman, so is baseball to the American. I’ll go as far as to recommend listening to baseball commentary on the radio. Play it loud and let your neighbors hear what you are listening to; it will calm them and put them at ease about you."