A: I know you don’t wanna go to the Yankee game tonight.
B: I’d go to any sporting event with you, you know, but I just never got baseball.
A: I thought I’d ask Melanie. She’s a fan.
B: Oh, sure. God, she’ll be thrilled.
Question: What does “got baseball” mean? Does it mean I don’t go to baseball games? Or I don’t like baseball? Is it common to use that?
Thank you!!!
It means something along the lines of
“I never understood why people found Baseball to be so interesting”. or
“What makes Baseball so interesting to watch?” or
“Baseball is boring I don’t understand why people like it so much.”
To add to MarkE’s answer:
We do not say “I never got …” often. Most people I know will say “I do not understand ….” to mean “What makes … interesting?”
I agree that American English speakers don’t often say “I never got…” or "I don’t get …(baseball, whatever) "but we do say it occasionally. Maybe it’s a regional expression more common in the Northeast USA, the area that I’m most familiar with? We also occasionally say “I’ve never understood…” (as MarkE mentions, and similar to jasonwojcik’s “I do not understand…”) with the same meaning of “I don’t know what makes … interesting to some people”.
We say it all the time in the Midwest, but when we say it it normally refers to how it appeals to us. I just don’t get Dungeons and Dragons. (I just don’t get the appeal…) Etc.
