Baseball and Schmaltz

Baseball: Played between two teams of nine players each. The goal of baseball is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four markers called bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot square, or diamond. A player on the batting team can stop at any of the bases and hope to score on a teammate's hit. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team gets three outs. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning; nine innings make up a professional game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins (see video ):




Schmaltz: Yiddish word meaning grease or liquid fat (especially chicken fat) or very sentimental writings, art, or music (see video):



Baseball and Schmaltz: The Natural - 1984 movie with Robert Redford in which an average baseball player comes out of seemingly nowhere to become a legendary player with almost divine talent (see video):



Baseball and Schmaltz: The poles of Philadelphia traffic lights and streetlights were greased to prevent fans from scaling them after the Phillies won the World Series (see photo):