Folks, I am two for two.

First, I learn that I missed Moscow Potato 2007, then I find out that the Russian National Baseball Team was in the U.S. for a month of games. And I didn’t see any of them.

You didn't know that Russians played baseball? Neither did I, and neither, maybe, did the team. OK, that was not kind. But in a month of baseball, they racked up the kind of win-loss record that makes the Chicago White Sox look good (OK, with the exception of 2005).

I am not a baseball fanatic. But I am both a sucker for lost causes and deeply committed to making sure my Russia-born children experience plenty of Russian culture as they grow up in the United States. And minor league games are a lot more fun than the majors these days.

The Russian National Baseball Team did its barnstorming from mid-July to mid-August, on a tour arranged by the U.S.-Russia Chamber of Commerce of New England and Total Baseball Development, a baseball training school based in Sioux City, Iowa. The Russians were playing in the U.S. as part of their training to qualify for the 2008 Olympic Games. Those are the summer games that will be held in Beijing, not the 2014 winter games that will be held in Sochi, Russia.

According to one blog report on the subject, the Russians realize they have an uphill climb ahead of them. But it says they may have history on their side: This blog, "The Accidental Russophile", maintains that there is an ancient Russian came called lapta, which, when brought to the U.S. by one of the many waves of Russian immigrants, became the forerunner of baseball. Something tells me this argument is one trading card short of a full deck, because, as any New Jerseyan worth their tolls on the Garden State Parkway knows, the first baseball game was played in Hoboken, N.J. in 1846. Russian fur traders were in Alaska and California earlier than that, but the big wave of Russian immigration to the East Coast happened after 1880.

History and heart weren't much help to the Russian team during their U.S. stay: The team struggled to play in summer heat in old-style flannel uniforms. Maybe they'll get something summer-weight for the Olympic qualifying games, which are to be held in Europe next month.

Go, team.