Baseball and Touch
I first have to say that I'm not a big fan of baseball. Back in Jr. High I was in a way, because the Jr. High I went to had a pretty good team. I even remembered that I begged my mom to get me a Yankees baseball shirt for my birthday one year, but I still didn't like it as much as I liked basketball and football.
The one that really influenced me in baseball and baseball history was my 8th grade history/english teacher, Mr. Pekarske. He was pretty well known around my Jr. High because even though I went to a pretty small school, my teacher stood out. He rode a bike to school, he had a long beard (which was styled in a way that looked like he was a hippie in another life) and his classroom was filled with baseball memorabilia and his walls were painted all over by all the logos of every baseball team in the MLB. It was actually very very cool because every year, the next 8th grade glass was responsible for painting one logo or mascot on his wall.
His class was also the only history/english class to set aside a whole semester for learning about baseball and its history. We would watch movies about all these baseball greats like Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth and also the start of the Negro Leagues. We had tests on "The Black Sox" conspiracy and baseball in South America. I've never been in a class like that before and I trully enjoyed it. During the end of the school year, we took a field trip to Milwuakee and watched the Brewers play against the Chicago White Sox. It was great watching baseball in person, even though it was our home team that lost that game. Even now, the Brewers aren't a very good baseball team but the people of Wisconsin are still hoping to see their team be great one day.
Now, this leads me to Touch. That game between the Brewers and the White Sox was the last baseball game I ever saw live. It would be the last time I would be interested in baseball. I never liked watching it on TV because IMHO, I think it's boring. Though it is called "America's Pastime," it seems that baseball is loosing its popularity here because of the more popular sports of football and basketball. In fact, the "Koshien" of the U.S. is basically the Rose Bowl (which is the ultimate college football championship) and the NCAA Basketball Tourney.
Not much attention is put upon the college baseball teams as they do the other aformentioned sports events. Baseball is still popular here, don't get me wrong but it's just not interesting to me at all.
When I discovered Touch though, my love for the game which I had back in the 8th grade began to revive again. The anime and the manga made the "highlights" of the game really exciting. It just made basball interesting to me again so I began to watch it. So although Touch really isn't about baseball (if you think about it) but rather just the drama of life, Adachi sure knows how to make the game exciting right?
<--back to opinions
