Sports 'n Shi

With regard to sports, being in Morocco is pretty fuckin odd. The two sports I was debatably passable at, running and soccer, are almost exclusively popular here and thus I now suck at them. Barely existent sports such as baseball and football, however, now redisplay my talentless coordination as the calculated dominance of a virtuoso. Those who have seen me play baseball in the US know, with complete certainty, that I am terrible. Moroccans who have seen me play baseball here (I’ll get to this) are amazed by my ability to catch the ball more than half the time. Those who have seen me play football in the US are aware of how worthless I am. People here are in awe of my ten, sometimes even fifteen foot completions.

Soccer and running, however, are completely different animals. My host brother is a 19 yr old beast who runs a 2:30ish marathon for the Moroccan national youth team and some of the dudes we play sports with are on the town’s soccer team. These mofos are tanks. Luckily, the sport we’ve played the most is baseball and their swings are just as bad as mine. Yes, apparently my swing is so pitiful that a group of people who have only seen the game in bits of movies are instantly of equal caliber. Interestingly enough, their first experience with baseball was a lot like my first experience with baseball. By that of course I mean that someone was hit in the face with a bat. By me. Instead of Chris Mercaldi, my backswing’s target this time was the former pop superstar, Usher.