By Gary Is
February 3 2003

Was it the Grand Slams? Was it the Triple Plays or the Strikeouts? Was it because of the atmosphere in the ballparks or the allstar ballplayers? Or was it simply that you were born into baseball-loving family? Tell us, in your own words, how did you become interested in the great game of baseball?

How I Really Did

Gary Is
from Folkestone, UK
Originally published January 5, 2001

Time and time again I'm asked the same question and I always reply with the same phrase "I just did". Now that I'm sat here in front of my clapped-out pre-Neanderthal PC my mind really has started racing.

How did I really become interested in a sport that is mainly played in a country over three thousand miles away? I've never been to a ballgame, I've never even crossed the Atlantic, so what is it that's made me so besotted with a game that I too once called "glorified rounders"?

To this day I can honestly say that it was one Kevin Costner and one Ray Liotta who gave me a whole new outlook on the game. Ray Kinsella (Costner) an ex-hippie who learned to play the sitar, decides to plow over his cornfield to build a baseball field in the hope that his late father's hero will come back and play ball on his farm.

OK, there's no reason why that should have an affect on me. But then we come on to the 'hero'. A ballplayer who died fifty years ago, a ballplayer who was wrongly banned from playing professional ball for allegedly fixing a World Series, a ballplayer who took his shoes off to play ball because they hurt his feet, a ballplayer who was three bases short of a Home Run.

Suddenly it's all coming into place, my love for the game is not because of the rules, the tension in the dugouts, the millionaires in the bullpen or the big, ginger-haired Irish-American Home Run King on first base. It's much deeper than that. My love for the game is because of coincidence.

That one ballplayer who goes by the name of "Shoeless" Joe Jackson is guilty of turning me into the baseball fan I am today.)

Remember I mentioned coincidence...

His name: Joseph Jackson - my middle name is Joseph.
Shoeless: One time my feet hurt when I played in new football boots when I was at school so I played football (soccer) in my socks. In 1994 - before I saw the movie. Joe only did this once. 
Date of Death: 5th December 1951 - I was born on 5th December 1981, thirty years to the day.

I know that there isn't a lot there but I know there are probably more instances and I will continue to investigate this further.

"Shoeless" Joe Jackson

I am ashamed to say that baseball has had to play second fiddle to my local football (soccer) team Grimsby Town FC. If I was offered a season ticket for the sport of my choice I'm afraid I would choose my Grimsby Town FC nine times out of ten. But the New Year has turned and I have made my resolutions. Baseball will be neglected no more.

"If you build it..." Well I've built the site, now it's up to you.