Please, please, can somebody tell me, what is the deal with baseball?

When Washington Mayor Anthony Williams announced last week that the "dream" of bringing baseball to the capital was on its deathbed, I felt a bit like Teresa Heinz Kerry probably felt when her husband lost the election – secretly relieved.

I may have been the only Washingtonian who rejoiced. Until now, I had chosen not to publicise my thoughts, for example, by planting a "no to baseball" sign in our front yard. (The pro-baseball posse on my front lawn would have dwarfed the crowd at the "World" Series. And for "world" read the US and Canada, bearing in mind that our northern friends only have two teams.)

But I can no longer carry my lonely secret in silence. Clearly, I am somehow inadequate as a human being. So I am outing myself. I am ready for the onslaught.

For months, the talk over every garden fence has been about nothing else. Baseball was coming, just as sure as winter follows fall. While others smiled and nodded enthusiastically, I wanted to shoot myself, or possibly my husband, a chronic baseball fan.

My fellow Brits would find the row that has muddied the tale of baseball coming to Washington almost as mind-numbingly dull as the game itself, so I'll skip the details. But as far as I can tell, it boils down to the fact that Major League Baseball, meaner than Scrooge and richer than your wildest dreams, wants Washington, an elitist city whose public coffers are so ill-managed that it can scarcely field a decent high school, to pay. A few brave city council members imperiled the deal by suggesting that private money should be found. Tough, said baseball. There are plenty of other suckers around, including Las Vegas, who will cough up to host the erstwhile Expos of Montreal.

Then, last night, there was word of a deal. The city's liability for cost overruns was slashed. Private funding is to be sought but not required. Imagine my delight.

It's not cricket. That much I'll admit. Baseball is without a shadow of doubt more exciting than cricket. I have tried - really tried (not hard enough, apparently) – to enjoy the spectacle of men batting a ball across a field which exasperatingly does not even have to be of a uniform size. Centrefield can be 410 feet away from homeplate, or 400 feet, or 420 feet, or however long one of baseball's eccentric, greedy owners decides it should be. If you've got a team full of sluggers, move the fences in. If you've got great pitching, create a death valley in centre field. That's fair, isn't it?

There is no World Cup of baseball, though the Japanese have made serious inroads in recent years and it is now an Olympic sport, since the Americans rammed it down everyone's throat in Los Angeles. Baseball players, a scurvy lot as it is, now can add steroid abuse to a long litany of bad behaviour which already included wife-beating, cocaine use and illegal betting. Baseball players, even their fans will admit, are reputed to have the lowest collective IQ in sport.

It's not that I'm anti-American, or God forbid, un-American. Really, I'm not. After five years, I think I've earned the right not to like the "national pastime". (Mental note; must check whether liking baseball is a requirement of citizenship.) I have sat through several games, live and televised. I have munched the hot dogs, drunk the stale beer and sucked on the salty pretzels. I have tolerated the bottom-numbing plastic seats and reached for a foul ball. I know now that the singular of "innings" is really "inning." I have kept an eye on the jumbotron to see if my face pops up and cheered for the fan of the match, sorry, game. I know most of the vocabulary – stealing a base, hitting a homer, the sacrifice fly. Slugging percentages, earned run average, you name it, I can parrot it. I have sung and swayed, feeling rather silly, doing the seventh inning "stretch" to the words: "Take me out to the ballgame/Take me out to the crowd/Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks/I don't care if I ever get back/ And it's root, root, root for the home team/If they don't win it's a shame/Cause it's one, two, three strikes, you're out/At the old ball game."

Now that I think about it, there was a time when I almost loved baseball, even as I prayed for a decisive ninth inning, torrential rain or some other act of God, and fretted about the traffic jams on the way home.

I remember that first match, sorry, game, in the stifling humidity of Baltimore. I spent hours, gripped, as my American friends explained what was going on miles below us. That speck-like figure on the mound was actually engaged in a mathematical puzzle that would have occupied at least 50 per cent of Einstein's brain. Will he throw a curve ball, a hard slider, a fast ball up and in, or, perhaps, scrambled eggs over easy? Hell, I don't know what these things mean, but the way my husband says them, they sound pretty cool. The guy with the bat was, in fact, feverishly whizzing through all the possibilities. Should he foul it off, or swing for the fences? That overweight guy on the third base line may look like he's picking his nose but he's really sending signals to the runner on first. Should he steal second, stay where he is, or just keep gobbing dollops of tobacco spit on the grass? And as for the manager, that pasty, poker face over the pot belly hides thoughts so deep and infinite that only God could truly grasp them.