Ah, October! The golden days ache with sweetness and longing, apples hang heavy on the bough, and a man's thoughts turn to ...

... the World Series. An American man's thoughts, anyway. Which brings us to two burning questions: Will the Injun-stomping Sox scale the Rox? And, Mommy, is there baseball in Germany?

The answer to the second question is yes, which is no small source of solace for U.S. expats (or Dominican expats, Japanese expats, etc.) who sometimes simply must get a fix -- in the flesh and not just on the tube -- of the boys of summer. While baseball has become increasingly popular in soccer-mad Germany in recent years, it remains a marginal sport. The top players are all basically amateurs, the fields are sorry, and the level of play is about what you'd see at an average college game in the States.

But it's baseball.

One thing that immediately stands out is the teams' names. They're not the usual clipped, matter-of-fact German variety, which in soccer is typically something like 1. FC (short for Erster Fußball-Club, or "First Soccer Club") followed by the name of the home city. The baseball teams in Germany's premier league (1. Baseball Bundesliga) have jazzy, American-style names, most of which are English words: Capitals (Bonn), Cardinals (Cologne), Indians (Gauting), Disciples (Haar), Regents (Hanover), Stealers (Hamburg), Athletics (Mainz), Tornados (Mannheim), Nightmares (Neunkirchen), Untouchables (Paderborn), Hornets (Saarlouis), Alligators (Solingen), and Hawks (Tübingen).

Two teams have German names: the Regensburg Legionäre ("Legionnaires") and Heidenheim Heideköpfe ("Heath Heads"). Heath Heads? That one sounds like it came out of left field, but it's hardly odder than, say, Dodgers, not to mention such minor-league gems as Muckdogs, Lugnuts, Dust Devils, and Mud Hens.

Baseball lingo in Germany is also a mishmash of English and German, only more so. Some American terms have been adopted more or less completely, such as Strike, Bunt, Catcher, Single, Double Play (or Double-Play, Doubleplay). Others are used alternatively with German equivalents, such as Inning/Spielabschnitt, Out/Aus, Innenfeld/Infield, Run/Punkt, Hit/Schlag, Runner/Läufer, Flyout/Flugaus, Batter/Schlagmann, Pitcher/Werfer, Walk/Freilauf, Error/Fehler. In a few cases, only German terms are used, such as Spielstand ("score"), Schläger ("bat"), Wurf ("throw"), Handschuh ("glove").

There are also mongrel terms such as Buntversuch ("bunt attempt"), Outfieldzaun ("outfield fence"), geladene Bases ("loaded bases"). And along with Playoffs, there are Playdowns.

Playdowns (or Abstiegsrunde in proper German) are among the relatively few areas in Germany -- a land steeped in socialistic solidarity -- where competition is rougher than in the generally more cutthroat U.S.A. In Major League Baseball, a player who performs poorly can be sent down to the minors. In German baseball, as in German soccer, entire teams that perform poorly are relegated to the next-lowest league.

German baseball rules call for the last-place finishers in the No. 1 league's two divisions to drop to the No. 2 league (2. Baseball Bundesliga) the following season, while the winners of the No. 2 league's two divisions are promoted to the No. 1 league. Meanwhile, the next-to-last teams in the No. 1 league play a best-of-three relegation series -- Playdowns -- against the second-place finishers in the No. 2 league.

Imagine the New York Yankees, after a season in which their zillion-dollar payroll brought them zilch, in a league with teams like the Buffalo Bisons, Columbus Clippers, and Durham Bulls. Would they then be the Bronx Bomblets?

(Friendly acknowledgements for consultations on this post go to Douglas "Dougout" Sutton, formerly with Hamburg's Stealers and now, as always, a true-blue fan of the St. Louis Cardinals.)