African Baseball

I awoke in Africa this morning and two minutes later broke my ankle. Cape Town, South Africa doesn’t have much in the way of a baseball tradition, unless you are a communist and you actually count cricket as similar. After 2 weeks of searching, I have found only one place in town, "The Bar Sport", that has any American sports. Wedged in a corner in the back and perched atop a bauble-strewn bookshelf, a small 12" television is set to ESPN. Surrounding every other wall surface, however, are massive monitors blaring French, English, Algerian and South African football (that's soccer, my man), Zimbabwean, Indian and Australian Cricket, and the worst knock-off version of Fear Factor I have ever seen with a man driving a truck in a small circle blindfolded with his wife in the back shooting bow and arrows. Seriously. Of course, this is Africa, and shit closes here at like 10pm, 12 if you pay double the price for your drinks. Seriously. But that doesn't really matter since drinks a about $0.75. But that itself doesn't even matter because with the +6hour time difference, games don't start until 2 hours after your protests have been forgotten and the bartender who threw you out is already asleep at home. Which brings me to my point: I have to rely on checking the European version (Uh, I thought I was in Africa) of CNN for any whisper of baseball. I wore my Red Sox jersey to bed last night and set my alarm for 4am. Two hours later it went off and, fumbling for the remote, I turned on CNN. A British political analyst was droling on and on about the policy differences between George Bush and John Kerry in a way only an Englishman really can when… “In other news, sports history has just been made..." I didn't even hear what followed. Mostly asleep before to up on my bed shouting and hollering and crying and pounding on the walls and ceiling (at 4 something in the morning remember). A minute later the phone rang, startling me and breaking me from my hysterics. In the process of trying to stop bouncing AND grab the receiver, I unfortunately caught my foot in my blanket, lost balance and fell off the bed, onto the desk next to it, slid off that and landed flat-backed onto the floor with the phone line wrapped around my arm and face. “Hello?” “Hello, sir. Is everything okay, sir? We got a call there was some banging coming from your room."
"Yeah. No. Wait, I'm not sure. I think I fell out of bed. Uh, do you have the news on?" "Yes, Mr. Underhill. I see that your Red Sox won. I thought that was the problem. Congratulations. Is everything else alright."
"I think I broke my ankle." "Very well done indeed, sir. Shall I send the nurse?" Terribly dramatic. And the best morning I’ve had in ages. note: didn't actually break my ankle, but he did hurt it like hell. Everything else is somewhat true.