And then we go and watch cricket or polo, wondering why nobody understands such simple games...
It's always interesting, then, to watch a baseball movie. As someone who loves the game live (even if it is the Padres) but can't watch it on the telly, I find movies about the sport fascinating - especially when they're not actually about baseball.
A couple of years ago we had Moneyball - more about the underdog studying stats - and now we have 42, the story of the great Jackie Robinson.
Granted that name will mean jack over here, but in the annals of the big bat game, he's a legend. And as much for what he did on the field as what he achieved off it. And 42 attempts to capture both.
Jackie was the first black Major League player. In 1947. A time of entrenched segregation. And while 42 is his story, it's also the story of baseball itself, his team mates and the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Ricky, whose dream of getting more black folk in through his gates started the whole thing.
And that's pretty much it.
If it was on TV on a Sunday afternoon, you'd enjoy it and think no more about it. As it is, it's on the big screen - so you'll go to the cinema, watch it, and think no more about it.
That's not to say it's a bad film - far from it. There's not a bad performance in sight, it has its funny moments (a young child uttering the word "discombobulated" is a particular delight), it aims to move and stir... it pretty much ticks all the boxes.
Chadwick Boseman and Nicole Beharie (as Jackie and his wife Rachel) both serve up strong, convincing performances (Boseman in particular captures the hurt and anger Robinson must have felt excellently), while the supporting cast all do their job without particularly shining.
Harrison Ford, though, is an odd one. As Ricky, he mumbles and grumbles his way through the thing, never quite stealing scenes but not falling flat. I'd almost call it 'measured', if it weren't for the grumbling.
I last saw him in Morning Glory, where - as veteran journalist Mike Pomeroy - I took his mumbled, gravelled delivery as a character affectation.
It would seem not. It appears to be the thing he does now. Which would be fine if he came with his own subtitles. But sadly not. So you're left straining to understand him, like a pensioner who has switched their hearing aid off.
It's not so bad as to ruin the film, but it is bloody annoying.
But that's really the only criticism - well, that and the two-hour running time.
The film kind of loses its way a bit towards the end, as they decide to focus more on the Dodgers' race for glory than how Robinson is coping with overcoming the barrage of racism that has dogged him at every ground, but hey - that's part of his history too, so it's kinda forgivable.
And that really is it.
Yes 42 could have maybe been a bit grittier, could have maybe spent a bit less energy striving to be worthy, but hey - it took more in its opening weekend in America than any other baseball movie (not that it's about baseball) has ever managed, so the producers will rightly say they got it right.
Doesn't make it the Oscar contender I think they were heading for, but while it fails to hit a home run it does make its way round the bases at a decent enough pace.
(Who says Brits don't get baseball, eh?)
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