In one of my favorite Sherlock Holmes stories, the esteemed detective had deduced that the villain was an American. But, all the suspects were purporting to be British. How to figure out which one was lying?

Elementary, my Dear Watson! Holmes tossed the prime suspect a ball. He caught it with his left hand, at which point Holmes promptly arrested him.

Why, you might ask? Because the man was right-handed. A right-handed European man would catch a ball thrown to him with his right hand. A right-handed American, however, would wear his baseball glove on his left hand. That means a right-handed American would catch a ball with his left hand, which is the exact opposite of how the rest of the world works.

Yeah, baseball is that important. Baseball has left such a mark on America, that you sometimes have to look through foreign eyes to see its full impact. When I was teaching at a university in Poland, I noticed that a lot of my students used sports idioms incorrectly in their English. On a whim, I created an entire two-hour lecture on baseball-derived idioms in English. As Polish undergrads majoring in English sat spellbound, I detailed the origins and uses of phrases such as "strike-out," "homerun," "swing for the bleachers" and dozens of others. It was so popular, that I was asked to give it several more times to packed-out lecture rooms.

I got a fresh reminder of just how important baseball is when I took my son to see the Atlanta Braves in Spring Training. The Braves took on the Houston Astros on a picture perfect Thursday afternoon in Central Florida. The Braves train at Disney's Wide World of Sports in Kissimmee. The ball park is beautiful, and only seats about ten-thousand fans. It's an intimate environment to watch America's game.

Using SeeMySeat.com, I was able to score two tickets for seats on the Braves side of home plate, about 10 rows away from the field. The price? Eight bucks a piece. When my son and I got to the stadium, people were lined up to pay $25.00 a piece for seats in the upper deck. It pays to shop for deals early.

It was early in Spring Training, so we didn't get to see much of the stars. Chipper Jones had only one at-bat. But we did get to see some serious baseball. We were sitting in a section surrounded by hard-core Braves fans. I've been watching the Braves since I was five years old and we got cable. Many of the people in the stands that day had been following the Braves since they were in Milwaukee, well before WTBS out of Atlanta made Dale Murphy a household name.

As the game played out on the field, we all talked and joked about Braves teams of the past. The Braves were down early by five runs, and that prompted us to talk about great rallies that we'd seen over the years.

In the top of the seventh, my boy asked, "Dad, the Braves are getting outplayed. Do they have a chance?" My boy and I watch a lot of football together. In football, you build a lead and then run out the clock. If you are up by two scores with under 5 minutes left on the clock, you grind out some yards and burn time. There is even a name for it - "garbage time." That's the play that happens after the game is effectively over, but the clock just hasn't hit zero yet.

Baseball? In baseball, it ain't over till it's over. "Sure, son," I remarked, "Every pitch the guy on the mound serves up is potentially the start of a game-changing rally. A baseball game can turn anytime."

Everyone around me agreed. Sure enough, the Braves rallied in the bottom of the seventh for five runs to tie. Bottom of the eighth, a solo homerun over the right-field fence put the Braves ahead for good.

As the last batter for the Astros pop flied out, the crowd exploded with high-fives all around.

Baseball is America. Or at least, baseball is how America should be. These days, especially with a weak economy, we have this tendency to throw up our hands a lot. But it ain't over till it's over. Each pitch is a new chance to get back into the game. There's no time clock winding down. It's about performance, not time. There is just the plate, the bat, and the next pitch. When you get your shot, its up to you to make the most of it.

There is no garbage time. If you are behind, keep fighting. Fight hard enough, and you can win, no matter the odds. The man down by five, in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and bases empty, is going to bat just as hard as if he were leading off in the first inning.

Are you ahead? Get complacent and your opponent will hand you your head on a platter. You are never so far behind that you can't catch up. You are never so far ahead that bad play can't cost you the game.

Those are lessons I want my boy, as the future of America, to take to heart. If the schmucks running our Fortune 500 companies had learned some of these lessons, would we be in this economic mess? I don't think so. Instead, they piled on points and thought they could coast it out to the end. Only life doesn't work that way, which is why the rest of world got smart and learned how to beat GM and GE.

At one point, I asked my boy during the game, "Do you know what you call a man who fails two-out-of-three times in his job?"

My boy said he didn't know. "You call him the team MVP!" I said. Go one-for-three at the plate, and you bat .333 on your way to a million-dollar payday. Baseball is the ultimate percentage sport. Which is what I tell my sales reps all the time. You have to keep trying and play the percentages. Get up to bat enough, the wins take care of themselves. The deals you close will more than make up for the even bigger number that get away.

Need to learn something about life? Then get out to the ballpark. There are great deals on tickets you can afford, even in this economic climate. Just search for your favorite team on SeeMySeat.com to find the best seats for the best price. Take your kids with you. Because what baseball has to teach, are things every generation of American needs to learn!

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 [What Baseball Teaches About America]

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