Brian Micklethwait - Ed Smith on how baseball defeated cricket in America

The real answer is that baseball got a lucky bounce in the form of the Civil War. The pitch could be rougher and less equipment was needed, so bored soldiers found it easier to set up a baseball game than a cricket match. Baseball, for the first time, started to draw ahead.

WTF? I say, Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot? Cricket looks to my un-expert eye to require less equipment…maybe he means the wickets and bales? That’s 5 sticks at each end. Hmph. Well, whatever. Read Brian’s excerpt for the real answer.

I say this with a bit of a heavy heart, as a baseball-playing, baseball-loving American Texan, who fell head over heels for cricket after precisely 10 (ten) minutes of exposure to the sport being played live — it’s silly for us to have rejected the sport.
WE. WOULD. RULE.

I thank our technological mavens for providing cricket as a search option on the DirecTV channel guide, because every now and again, I will find it, and settle in for a few hours of sport.