Thursday, June 05, 2008

Why I must leave this country immediately.

I brought my baseball glove and baseball to the picnic on Saturday, but for a while we couldn't play catch because Sergio, the only other person in Germany with a baseball glove, had to leave for a bit to go look at an apartment and the glove was in his bag. Though really it wouldn't have mattered if he left it, since he's a left, and this was an otherwise right-handed shindig. We're not prejudiced; it just worked out that way.

But then Sebastian had a brilliant brainstorm: why don't we hop on our bikes and ride down the street to the sporting goods store and buy anther glove? I expressed skepticism. It's hard to find a baseball glove in this country - I know because I've tried. Love for baseball seems to be limited to America, Japan, and a few countries in South America. I've looked around a bit, and never found a good source. Oh come on, said Sebastian. Of course they'll have them.

So we hopped on our bikes, rode through the park, out onto the street and into downtown. Weaving with precision between mere pedestrians, from street to street to the bike rack, we locked our bikes with the clink-clank efficiency of a machine. I began to feel optimisic. My search before had been lazy at best. And we were going to a real sporting goods store. This would be easy. We were unstoppable! We entered the mall and bounded down the escalator into the underground store. All the signs of success were there. Racks of Gore-tex, shelves of shoes, balls of all shapes and sizes. This is going to be brilliant, I thought. In a total of ten minutes, we will have acquired a second glove and a beautiful game of catch will ensue. And in the corner, on the bottom of the rack, I saw the baseball gloves.

Kneeling down towards our prize, I could already deduce that these were not the finest gloves in the world, but that their reasonable price (a mere 17 euros!), decent construction, and lack of baseball experience amongst my compatriots would ensure that one of these gloves would fit the bill nicely. It was perfect. I extended my eager hand. But there was something wrong that caused me to pull it back. Some disturbance in the force. A million voices cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. This was a left-handed glove. And so was the next one. And the next. They were all left-handed gloves! I was kneeling in front of what could possibly be every single baseball glove in the country, and they were all lefties. How could this be?

For those of you who don't know because you are with the terrorists, the thing about baseball gloves is that you wear them on your non-dominant hand. So if you're right-handed like me and most of the world, you put your oh-so-non-symmetrical baseball glove on your left hand, and you throw with your right. If you're left-handed, you can't just strap on a standard baseball glove; you need a left-handed glove that goes on your right hand. I know, I know, it's confusing daddy. But this is just the way it is and always has been. My right-handed glove goes on my left hand. My brother's left-handed glove would go on his right hand if he were a bad-ass catch-playing motherfucker like myself*. But of course, since like 99.99 percent of the population is right-handed, it's really hard to find a left-handed glove (or a suitable chair/desk combination when it's time to take smeary notes in class). If this had been Larry's Left-Handed Sporting Goods Store, I wouldn't have been so shocked. But it wasn't.

As I uttered expletives, as the shock set in, Sebastian started off to find someone to help us. But of course the store was suddenly devoid of help. He found one tall guy standing next to the information counter and dove in, asking for "baseball handschuhe**" I don't sprechen, so I don't know for sure, but it seems like the conversation went something like this:

Sebastian: Excuse me, do you guys have baseball gloves?

Salesguy: No.

Sebastian: Oh. Well, we found some over there, but they're all for left handers.

Salesguy: Oh. Well, those are all we have then.

Sebastian and I looked at each other. This was a rather unsatisfying bit of dialogue coming from a guy I wasn't sure we could trust. He lacked a certain dedication; his pasty white skin and oddly baggy sweatshirt betrayed any sporting confidence he may have had. He wasn't exactly what I would call athletic. And I'm pretty sure he rolled his eyes when Sebastian said the word 'baseball'. Attitude! In fact, neither of us were sure if homeboy actually worked at the store.

This just can't be, I told Sebastian. Do you know how hard it would be to find FOUR left handed gloves in The States? And this place has ONLY THOSE FOUR! What we needed was some knowledgeable in-store guidance, and pronto. So we hightailed it over to an older woman with bifocal glasses, a price scanning gun, standing behind a cash register. She looked at us and her eyes said BRING IT ON BITCHES! So Sebastian asked about the baseball handschuhe. She tilted her head back slowly, letting the challenge sink in, no doubt considering her options. This was our girl. She grabbed the phone and sprechened the Deutsch, machine gun style to whoever was on the other end of the line. Ten seconds later, she hung up and told us to meet a guy right over there who could save us. She found us a guy. Our guy. I wanted to kiss her on the mouth. I refrained.

Unfortunately, this guy was no better than the first. Short and pudgy, with facial hair that was trying way too hard, he looked like the kind of guy who would tell you all about the latest carbon fiber cycling accessories, but then smoke a cigarette while he rides. I would guess he was about sixteen and has never seen the world outside of the tiny German village he came from, and the utopian embrace of Hamburg. And he most certainly didn't know a damn thing about baseball, or helping customers for that matter. We stepped onto the mound with questions and needs, he saddled up to the plate like an overweight catcher with a hang over and an impending divorce.

Sebastian: We're looking for baseball gloves.

Pudgy: Yeah, right over here.

The Pudgster waltzed over to the four lefties, and slid one on his right hand.

Sebastian: Yes. But those are all left-handed gloves.

Pudgy (looking at the glove on his right hand, and then at us like we were the idiots): No. Look. Right hand.

Waterboarding is a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. This was torture.

Sebastian: No, look, it says here on the tag that it's a left-handed glove.

Pudgy: That tag must be wrong.

I'm not making this up. If there were guns in Germany, I would have gone on a shooting spree. I tried to explain.

Me: No, see, if you're right-handed like me, you wear the glove on the left hand, and throw with your right.

I mimed the CATCHING and the THROWING. Pudgy looked at me. He looked at the glove. He took the left-handed glove off his right hand and tried, like a monkey with a rubiks cube, to put it on his right. Obviously, it wouldn't work. I wondered if he was going to stand there (slouch, really) and tell the American how a baseball glove works. Fortunately for all of us, he changed his strategy.

Pudgy: We don't have it then.

Yeah, thanks for the update genius.

Salesguy Number One had recommended another store to try, so with our proverbial tails between our actual legs, Sebastian and I walked back out into the world, without a whole lot of optimism. The second store was fancier than the first, but yielded nothing. We looked around ourselves, found nothing, and then asked a sales guy. Before Sebastian got to the second l in baseball, the guy was already shaking his head with a smirk.

I'm sure that when a young Ghandi first stepped (bare) foot onto western soil, at some point there was a moment where he realized that it just wasn't the place where he belonged (what tasteless advertising asshole blogger compares himself to Ghandi, even as a joke? This one, apparently). I dare say I have a decent understanding of how he must have felt in that moment. I have lots and lots of love in my heart for Deutschland, but there's this feeling I get every time I have to explain why I don't like beer. Or what the word 'douchebag' means. Or how a baseball glove works.






* He doesn't play catch, but he has other bad-ass motherfucking qualities, BELIEVE YOU ME.

** That's right the word for 'glove' literally translates into 'hand shoe'


2 comments:

Jenne said...

Dan. You are awesome. I just had to literally scrap myself off the floor from laughing so hard. I have to go shower off the dirt and sweat now. (Dirt from the floor. Sweat because it's 100 degrees at 1 am right now in NY and I have no air conditioning.)

Sprocketboy said...

This is hilarious. Deutschland: die Service-Wueste!