It’s a Wednesday afternoon in Milwaukee and I’m sitting in my living room. It’s a nice day out and an easy breeze is wafting in through the windows in my living room. I have an ice-cold root beer in my hand and a random Serie Nacional de Béisbol game is on my television. Life is good friends, life doesn’t get much better than this.
It’s hard for some baseball fans to understand why I love unaffiliated baseball so much. I’ll be honest, as much as I view myself as a sort of advocate for all of unaffiliated baseball I’m often not sure how to get through to people who aren’t fans already. If they have decided that Major League Baseball is all that matters then I’m not sure how to get them to care about a game being streamed from a YouTube channel in Spanish featuring players they’ve never heard of and probably never will unless they actually watch.
Most of all, as I watch the lovely baseball game playing out in front of me I realize that if they aren’t interested in watching this then they really aren’t my audience. It’s okay for them to not want to watch the CNS, but this is by far my favorite baseball league across the globe. It’s hard sometimes to describe why I love unaffiliated ball as much as I do, even moreso when the unaffiliated league in question is my favorite of all the baseball offered throughout the world.
There are some people who simply won’t be on board with enjoying a league like the CNS. I was recently talking to a good friend on Twitter, Joshua Lindo (@SuperDuperLindo) when he dropped this line about winter ball in general, “It’s definitely different in that sense, it’s more like pure for lack of a better meaning.” We, of course, then segued into talking about how much fun winter ball is. Whether that baseball takes place in Nicaragua, Mexico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, or anywhere else in the world it feels so much better than what MLB has to offer because it reminds me of why I fell in love with baseball in the first place.
Toros de Camagüey put this game out of reach a few innings back. The game has turned into a complete blowout, yet here I am still enjoying my time spent watching this game. If you can watch a CNS game and not come away with that same feeling of watching a pure and fun version of baseball then I’m not sure I can ever connect you with unaffiliated baseball in any way. Baseball is a hell of a game, and with the CNS back in action all is right once again in my baseball world.
Lead photo courtesy of Yirsandy Rodríguez – BaseballdeCuba
