I hurry, straight off the plane from London, to Gate 14 at Rogers Centre, home of the Toronto Blue Jays, just in time to see one of the greatest short stops in baseball history. Roberto Alomar, who retired in 2004 after a 16-year career, is being elevated to the team's 'Level of Excellence', a series of hoardings around the stadium that commemorates key Blue Jays figures; he makes a speech, a sell-out crowd go crazy beneath the fireworks, and I know that I have, once again, made the right choice: spending my holiday alone on the other side of the world, watching a sport that leaves almost everyone I know cold.

Alomar was adored during the Blue Jays' most successful era, which brought them back-to-back World Series glory in 1992 and 1993. I came to Toronto in 1994, and they haven't won a single thing since. I think, without them knowing it, I may be their curse.

So, let me begin at the start.

I was 18 years old, and had been brought up in Belfast with a football glued to my feet, when I scored a free trip off the back of 'the Troubles': young Catholics and Protestants sent on holiday together on government money, to spend the best part of three months hugging each other and apologising on behalf of our religions. Who was I to argue?

I ended up staying in Canada for a year, working for the Toronto Sun and blagging couch space from those who found my accent threatening enough not to refuse. I earned about $180 a week, which ruled out restaurants, clubs and all but one strip joint (thank you, Zanzibar). The search for budget entertainment led me to baseball and a cheap seat in the heavens. I would have preferred to watch the local ice hockey team, the Maple Leafs, but those tickets exist in a parallel universe I have yet to discover. And since the demise of the Montreal Expos in 2004, the Rogers Centre has been the only ballpark in a country obsessed with the rink: so, outsider as I was, I already had something in common with my fellow fans.

My holidays since have repeated the same pattern: ignoring every other destination on the planet to immerse myself, here, in baseball. The Major League season runs from April to October and each team plays 162 games, across an entire continent. In a normal week they play six games - and my plan is to see them all, beginning with a three-game, opening week home series against the 2007 World Series champions, the Boston Red Sox.

My seat as I watch Alomar pick up his award is at level 'five hundred' - back in the heavens, close to the spot where I watched my first ever game. Given the occasion, the fact that the Red Sox are here and it's the first home game of the season, imagine the type of money I had to fork out to be here at all. $60? $100? Try eight dollars, or four quid in real money. Later in the week I will shell out £28.50 to sit right behind home plate, close enough to hear the umpire's 'ssttrrriikke!', the dull thwack of ball on leather mitt and, best of all, the unique sound of a bat sending one up, up, up and gone.

Baseball fans could not be any more different from football supporters. Here, everyone drinks alcohol and mingles freely in the stadium, seldom reacting to a rival fan in the very next seat as they goad a nearby outfielder. When the game is over, they trundle home safely. The police presence is almost nonexistent and the only trouble I witness is two slightly drunken fans being ejected from the ground for informing Red Sox legend Manny Ramirez, in a deafening rasp, that he 'fucking sucked', which, to be fair, he did. (He has since been traded to the LA Dodgers.)

Tonight, the Jays defeat the Sox, as home pitcher AJ Burnett strikes out a line of household names. Walking back towards my hotel, I join in with the 20,000-strong mindless chants of 'Boston sucks! Boston sucks!' I am happy for many reasons but, above all, because I've witnessed a home run, and from the moment I saw my first - hit by Joe Carter, another man honoured in the Level of Excellence, nearly 15 years ago - the feeling of wide-eyed wonder has never changed.

It remains the main reason I love baseball. I reckon, given enough time, I could put a football past a world-class keeper. In fact, I once scored a penalty against Chris Woods (OK, he was no longer England's No 1, but one pen, one goal). I'd also back almost anyone, given a full day, to sink a tricky 20-foot putt, catch a 50-yard pass or score a three-pointer. For the life of me, though, I can't see how I could smack a Major League pitch into the bleachers. There is only one place I can test this theory - so I pull on my jersey and head to a batting cage.

On arrival, I am faced with three options; slow, medium and fast. I decide to start at medium, just to pick up the gist. The ball is to be spat from a machine at around 68mph. I stand ready, I hear the click of the machine, closely followed by a thump from the hanging pad directly behind me. I didn't see the baseball, but I can only assume that, at some stage, it whizzed past my ear. Fast forward one hour and I have actually managed to crack a few, even venturing into the fast cage, albeit for the pointless ceremony of it all. My wrists are throbbing and my ankle hosts a resplendent purple bruise, the result of a botched shot cannoning from bat to leg.

Battered but not yet beaten, I try pitching. I simply have to toss the ball as hard as I can at a computer generated batter, no more than five yards away from my virtual mound. I stand tall, wind up, cock the leg and let rip with such velocity that I fear a hernia. It registers at 42mph. I try another 30 or so times and that turns out to be my fastball. Top Major League pitchers throw a fastball somewhere in the region of 100mph.

My friend Greg Brady, a Toronto sports presenter, sums it up best: 'You can play them all, Colin, but you have to be born to play baseball.' He tells me this six beers - and 90 minutes - into game two of my journey. It is only 14 hours since the end of last night's game, yet I have never heard a player bemoaning the workload. The 'Bo Sox' travelled to Tokyo to launch the Major League season and the jetlag is beginning to show. We whack them all over the ballpark and run out winners by 10-2. In the third game, the Jays complete the sweep, and I get to see Frank Thomas crush a 'grand slam homer' - when there are runners on every base, meaning the team scores four runs - into the crowd, which leaves me on the floor, eyes watering with adrenaline, and a temporary lapse in the methodology of breathing. It is the most gratifying baseball experience of my life.

Roy 'The Doc' Halladay is Toronto's most popular ball player. He's a pitcher who could have walked into any World Series side of the past decade, but has chosen to remain with just one team. My team. Meeting him is, for me, the equivalent of a beer with Stevie G or a kickabout with David Healy.

Media relations in American sports are, however, a far cry from the protectionism of the Premier League. When I return to the Rogers Centre the following day, I'm told to make my way on to the pitch, where reporters and photographers are mingling freely with the players from both teams - only hours before their next game. As I sit in the dugout - the dugout! - waiting for The Doc, I receive numerous hellos, and tips of caps, from the Jays players. There are no stipulations from the press officer, apart from a polite request to put my coat on over the Halladay jersey I am wearing, as he's 'quite modest and that might be a bit, you know...'

The Doc turns out to be a bashful, respectful figure. His story is little-train-that-could inspiring. Plucked out of high school by the Jays, his first season in the Major Leagues was a disaster, and he was sent back down to one of the club's minor-league teams, broken and worth very little to anyone. The Jays kept faith. And, after completely rebuilding his pitching style, he returned a different man. He has been their number-one pitcher ever since, even picking up the Cy Young Award, baseball's equivalent of the golden boot.

Pitchers are gladiators. They stand elevated above all other players and if they have a bad day the team generally lose. There are not many other roles within team sports where one player feels such pressure. I ask him to take himself to Yankee Stadium, bottom of the ninth, everything resting on his shoulders. How does he not blow up? 'After I make a pitch, I have to start thinking about the next one,' he says matter-of-factly. After doing it over and over it's just like throwing down in the bullpen with nobody there.

'For me it's the competition. There are so many things going on and so many things to pay attention to, that's always intrigued me. With pitching, so much goes into it: tendencies, what batters do, what they don't do, different counts, where to throw the ball...' It's a long, long list by the time he finishes.

He says he stays in Toronto because 'there is not that separation between the athlete and other people. I like being a normal person.' Truth is he's anything but normal. He's the superhuman backbone of the only baseball team in Canada, yet he can walk down any street and 'people say hi and let me be on my way'.

And that's what I do. He thanks me (me!) for talking to him (him!) and heads towards the locker room. First pitch is in 90 minutes.

I'll gloss over the remaining three games of my trip as we are whitewashed at home by the Oakland A's - marking the lowest point of any overseas mission I have made to watch baseball. After I leave, the Blue Jays go on the road and sweep the Texas Rangers and the same inconsistency continues to dog our season. But then, unpredictability is part of baseball's appeal - any side, on their day, can beat the Yankees (who I hate with every bone in my body).

Yes, the sport has its flaws. It is, of course, still trying to find real solutions to a serious steroid problem. Personally, I could do without the marketing during every break in play (Eat pizza! Use this razor! Drive this car! Drink this beer! Now, God damn it! All at the same time!). And the sheer weight of games means some midweek match-ups are attended by no more than the most obsessive fans, and can seem like an afterthought.

What is even more disturbing is that George W Bush, in a recent interview, named Roy Halladay as his favourite player. Still, even with the dubious ignominy of wholeheartedly agreeing with an opinion held by Dubya, I am happy to be a fool in love with baseball. I get butterflies before first pitch, I swoon over strikeouts and I go weak at the knees when it's going ... going ... going ... gone.

· The Major League regular season finishes on 28 September, before the top teams progress to the play-offs and then the World Series, which starts on 22 October. Matches can be seen on NASN (Sky 417 or Virgin 533); visit nasn.com for more details

· This article was amended on September 8 2008. The caption to the photograph above read: 'Shaun Marcum of Toronto Blue Jays throws the first pitch against David Eckstein of the Boston Red Sox.' David Eckstein plays for Toronto; the first pitch was thrown to Dustin Pedroia of Boston. This has been corrected.