Georgia may soon see a new sports boom. This time it is baseball. On the outskirts of Tbilisi, at a school stadium, the country's first international baseball match took place. The Georgian team played the fathers of baseball - the Americans. The US team consisted of military instructors training Georgian soldiers before dispatching them to
Afghanistan.
The citizens of Tbilisi stared with surprise at the unknown game. Many
cannot understand the rules - a huge guy wearing a helmet hit a small
ball with a wooden stick and then ran somewhere. "And this is the
number one sport in the USA?" football fans asked, shrugging their
shoulders. But the organizers of the event are confident that
Georgians will soon start enjoying the game and people with bats on
Tbilisi sport grounds will not seem outlandish.
Obviously the Georgians lost to the Americans. However, this is the
first step in bringing in the unusual type of sport to Georgia.
Georgia has recently formed a national hockey team. And yet the
country does not have a single hockey stadium. The team played against
its age-long rivals - the Armenians. After a hammering in Yerevan, the
Georgian hockey players were complaining: "Our Armenian friends were
more cunning, inviting their North American compatriots who play in
the NHL to Yerevan . How can we compete with them?"
Georgiy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi. Exclusively for VK
