The visitors are from Turkey and are here as a Group Study Exchange organized by Rotary International. The GSE program allows people to experience the cultures of other nations firsthand.
Our friends from Turkey had an opportunity to take in a baseball game at Pittsburgh's PNC Park on Saturday, and of course, they saw the Pirates lose. They also had trouble following the game, being new to it.
I've taken GSE visitors to games in the past, and it turns out that the sport is rather difficult to explain. We're used to baseball from watching it all our lives, but explaining concepts such as hits and runs, balls and strikes, outs and innings -- not to mention more esoteric concepts like balks and the infield fly rule -- can prove to be very challenging, probably a lot like us trying to learn about cricket.
At any rate, our visitors seemed to have a nice time, and we really enjoyed showing them around. They also gave a presentation about Turkey for our Rotary club, which made us all want to make travel reservations. The presentation ended with the visitors doing a folk dance in their native costumes. Here are the women in the group (Selen, Guliz and Asli):
One of stops was at the Pennsylvania Trolley Museum, which, if you're ever around the Pittsburgh area, is definitely worth a visit:
By the way, I am aware that the Pirates are in second place, proving that the experts were correct about the National League Central being an extremely weak division. (I've heard it referred to as the "National League Comedy Central." Can't take credit for that, but it's funny!)
Trivia question 27: The Milwaukee Brewers are in first place in the NL Central. Counting the year they existed as the Seattle Pilots, how many years did the team play before it put together its first winning season?
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