Catch and Release

There's a link above, with an image of a randomly selected baseball glove for sale at Amazon. Feel free not to click it if you don't want to buy it. It is there as a visual cue.

Watched The 4400 this evening. It's a guilty pleasure. By "guilty", I mean it's a mildly entertaining mish-mash of X Files and J. Michael Straczynski's Rising Stars series (someday, someday, Sam Raimi's production company is going to get off its collective asses and bring that to the small screen). Still, I enjoy watching the trials and tribulations of agents Baldwin and Skouris, the messianic majesty of Jordan Collier (a fantastic Billy Campbell), and some great recurring guest turns from Summer Glau, the adorable (but not-too-talented) Lindy Booth, and the Reanimator himself, Jeffrey Combs.

So I watch the show, am mildly entertained by most of the performances, and keep coming back, hoping they're going somewhere. Tonight, they did. They went somewhere surprisingly big which will probably require them to make some other rather large adjustments in the coming weeks. Good for them. It does seem that they have a game plan.

Why do I bring up this moderately entertaining show about which I've never posted? Why is there a link to a baseball glove at the top of the post?

Because tonight, for at least the third time in my life on TV or in a movie, I've seen someone "prove" that an American male was left handed by throwing a ball at his head and seeing him catch it with his left hand. Really? An American male?

Are these shows written exclusively by people who've never played sports? Never played American sports? (By the way, I'm not trying to discriminate here...a right-handed hockey goalie would have the same reaction, but this is basically an American show, though it shoots in Vancouver.) Trust me. If you ever played baseball or softball and are right-handed, your reaction is to catch with your left hand. You might barehand a hot roller, or a slow bunt, but generally you're going to use your glove hand and then transfer it to your right. American, Cuban, Dominican, Japanese, the list goes on for quite a while.

I don't know why this particular thing irritates me, but every time I see it I want to hurl a ball - with my right hand of course - at the screen.