I didn’t stumble across baseball until late 2004, when the final outs of a historic World Series flickered on my bedroom television in Wirral, England. I was 10 years old, and the game was initially a mystery. Yet, strangely, I found the narrative of that Red Sox team intoxicating. The end of long championship droughts is a rare occurrence in sports, and Boston’s success after almost nine decades was beguiling, even to my untrained eye. That sentiment stuck with me as I learned to love baseball. Reading books and watching films, staying awake until sunrise watching Jon Miller on Sunday Night Baseball, America’s national pastime ultimately became my most fervent obsession.