The video: Batter up! Baseball enthusiast Satoshi Furukawa, a Japanese astronaut stuck on the International Space Station without a roster full of teammates, decided to field a game all by himself. Taking the makeshift mound in zero gravity, Furukawa winds up, pitches his (not very) fastball, swims through the air until he's outpaced the slowly-moving ball, picks up a bat, thwacks the very pitch he just threw, and then fields the ball. Watch the video below, which includes a bonus Star Trek soundtrack.
The reaction: This should come as no surprise, says Kat Hannaford at Gizmodo UK. Life aboard the the International Space Station surely gets lonely; astronauts must "get sick of gazing at Earth, and chomping floating peanuts nut-by-nut." Of course, "baseball is typically a team sport," says Tibi Puiu at ZME Science. But in outer space, there's no commissioner's office, and no rules and regulations — only "the laws of physics." So why not improvise? See for yourself:
