I’m over at the Wukesong Baseball Main Field, watching a sport 1.29999 billion of the 1.3 billion Chinese people don’t understand. One that will disappear from the Olympic movement as soon as the last out is made in the gold-medal game Saturday.

And I have a feeling almost no one will miss it.

First, let me tell you about the “stadium.”

“Wukesong Field” is a very small bank of (presumably) permanent seats behind home plate. It’s one level, and it doesn’t extend even to first and third base. It has seating for, maybe, 1,000.

Most of the 12,000 capacity here is temporary bleachers, big banks down each foul line, and smaller sets of temp bleachers in behind left-center and right-center.

So what is going to happen here is … as soon as the Chinese get around to it, they’re going to break down the scaffolding that supports the bleachers, and this will revert to a tiny facility. Probably a tiny unused facility.

In stark contrast to another popular U.S. sport, basketball, which the average man in the Beijing street actually will stop and watch (the NBA can thank Yao Ming) … baseball has almost no foothold here.

The Dodgers and Padres were over here in March, trying to drum up some interest in the sport. That trip didn’t seem to set off a firestorm of interest.

Think about it: If you didn’t know baseball from your childhood, if you didn’t grow up with baseball in the air around you, as Americans do … if you were taken to a game you had never seen, and sat in the stands and watched it … you would be utterly lost.

I mean, consider the most basic appearances. There is an expanse of grass in front of me, but there is a dirt path that is shaved into a sort of square on the inner part of that grass. I see four small squares of white at what are the right angles in that sort of dirt square.

Four men are standing on that dirt, and three are standing on the grass farther out. They do nothing for long periods of time.

Then there is a man who stands atop a little hill and throws a small white ball (it looks rather like a field hockey ball) at a man who is squatting, about 20 meters away and wearing a lot of padding. A man in black is right behind him (sort of referee, perhaps?) and off to the side is a man in a different uniform with a stick in his hands. He apparently is trying to hit the ball with that stick.

And when he hits it, he starts to run — except when he doesn’t. Some balls are hit in the air and land among the spectators, which actually seems quite interesting … but the man with the stick doesn’t run at all. Sometimes when he hits the ball, and runs, he gets to the first white square and turns around and goes back to sit.

The men all wear tight white pants that look a little bit like pajamas, they all wear these odd caps and the people standing on the grass all have some sort of large glove on one hand. (I know Michael Jackson does that, but what are these guys up to?)

Also, there is no clock that we can see. And the two groups of men seem to take turns standing on the dirt or sitting in long houses.

Like, what?

Baseball is a puzzlement to most of the world. Outside the U.S., and baseball hot spots in the Caribbean, Central America, Japan and Taiwan … nobody much plays this game. I am convinced that far more people understand team handball than baseball.

Anyway, try to put yourself in the place of Olympics spectators (what is going on?) — or members of the International Olympic Committee (we need this sport why?).

The IOC has come to realize that 1) baseball seems no more globally popular now than in 1992, when it became an Olympic sport; 2) it has ongoing drug issues in its most prominent league (the U.S. majors), and we’re trying hard to stamp that out; and 3) it now is clear to us that the world’s best players aren’t even here — because their professional teams won’t release them.

We can stand that, if it’s soccer, because we get a few of the top players and because, well, it’s soccer, and people everywhere understand it.

Among the curiosities here, so far …

1. Foul balls into the stands elicit as big a reaction as anything.

2. Fans are impressed whenever someone catches a ball, especially in the outfield. It seems to be held as a skill of a high standard.

3. Lin Chih-Sheng of Taiwan just doubled to left, and he did the sport a favor by hustling to second base and diving, head-first, into the bag. That spasm of action seemed to stir the fans from their stunned silence.

4. Thank goodness Taiwan is playing. They seem to have some of their own fans here, and they’re making some racket and leading some cheers. Otherwise it would be dead.

Anyway, we’re plugging along here, and I’m struck with one more reminder of how alien this game is, and how no one is even bothering to make it accessible.There is no information on the scoreboard in Chinese. None. English only. “At bat” and balls, strikes, pitch speed, hits, runs … English only.

Chinese probably doesn’t even have words for this stuff. And if it does, the Beijing organizers didn’t bother to get a scoreboard that could convey those words to the crowd.

It’s very strange. I’m watching the most American of games, and that is something of a comfort to me, after two weeks in China … but everything around it is a little off. It’s not quite right. Actually, it’s downright strange.