As baseball season rolls around again, I think back to a couple of years ago when it rained… and rained….and rained! Opening Day was postponed, every practice was cancelled until FINALLY the sun came out and we could start the baseball season – about a month late. My son was playing soccer then as well, and it was a similar story.
I remember telling my sister in the UK about this at the time, and she just laughed and said that if they postponed every soccer, cricket and rugby practice and game over there every time it rained, they would never get through the season!
I wonder why we take such enormous pride in keeping our fields perfectly green, with no brown mud showing at the expense of forfeiting or postponing our kids’ baseball and soccer games. Is it because we’ve spent so much of our taxpayers’ money watering the darn grass, that there’s no way we going to have kids running all over it and muddying it up? Or is it because we take such pleasure in seeing our green parks dotted throughout our Silicon Valley suburbs that we absolutely refuse to let that scene by spoilt by children’s games when it rains?
Either way, it seems a shame to me, and I have a wry smile on my face when I envision my nieces and nephews over there in Yorkshire, running around on the muddy fields, not caring a jot that it’s slippery and muddy. Who knows, maybe they actually prefer it that way!
Does anyone know why we are so protective of our green grass? Is this just another quirk of Silicon Valley life, or do I file this under “American traditions?”
Stumble It!