I’d suggest picking a local team. It’s more fun if you have emotional investment in it.
These are crucial, but also understand that everybody on the field knows it too. It’s no surprise to anybody what the batter or the pitcher want in any situation. Maybe right now, the batter wants to hit the ball to the right side (“hitting behind the runner”); next time up, maybe the batter wants to hit a ball high and deep (“sacrifice fly to move the runner along”). Maybe another time, the situation calls for a runner on base to steal. This is no surprise to anyone on the field. The objective is to interrupt the rhythm or timing of the other guy so he can’t do what he wants.
Think of it this way: a right-handed hitter stands left of the plate and swings the bat counter-clockwise. If his timing is right on, the ball goes where he wants.
If his timing is too fast (he’s “ahead of the pitch”) then when his bat makes ccontact with the ball, it will be too far to the left. The ball will go left of where he wants.
If his timing is too slow (he’s “behind of the pitch”) then when his bat makes ccontact with the ball, it will be too far to the right. The ball will go right of where he wants.
If he’s swinging too high, the ball will go down and bounce. If he’s swinging too low, the ball will go up in the air.
So the pitcher has an arsenal of deceptive ways to throw that ball, all of which look virtually the same to the batter: ways to throw the ball faster and slower, left or right, up or down, so the batter can’t hit the ball wherever he likes. That’s the chess match. 
One very good piece of advice I have - Until you have a real solid understanding of the whole game, things will happen that frustrate you because they will seem to go against certain rules you have finally come to understand, or just will seem not to make any sense. When this happens, don’t think too much about it. Aside from the basic main rules of the game, there are dozens of little quirks that aren’t nearly as important to know at first, and are only there to better the competetiveness of the game. When something like that happens, simply assume it’s one of those quirks, and it there for a reason that you will learn in time. A lot of people I think get turned off because it seems like there’s too much to learn, and too confusing. But you can totally enjoy the game only knowing the basic premise, if you don’t let the confusing stuff bother you.
But not the Yankees.
You could watch the World Baseball Classic this weekend. It is a tournament which is trying to be similar to the World Cup of baseball.
Tomorrow afternoon, the Cubs play the White Sox on WGN at 4:05 Eastern Time.
Also, if your cable company has the MLB network, there are games on the station frequently.
Infield fly puts the batter out. The baserunner is out because of interference. He would have had to tag up if the ball was caught, but free to advance at his peril if the ball was touched and dropped or just allowed to drop. So the second baseman has to be free to try to make the play, and knocking the fielder out of the way like that should be a clear case of interference. At this point the ball is dead due to offensive interference, so the rest doesn’t matter. Depending on the position of the runners and the number of outs (which you didn’t give), it could be:
- End of the inning
- Runner on first, two outs
- Runners on first and third, two outs
And the DH is the most-awful thing to have ever been thought up in baseball, followed by the All-Star game counting for the Series, and then interleague play as currently scheduled.
Well, I’d put the color line ahead of those things.
I disagree- the most awful thing ever thought up in baseball was the rule they had where the pitcher must throw the ball where the batter commanded him to. The next worst idea was either 7 balls = a walk, or batter out on a foul ball caught on one bounce.
On second thought, maybe this is the worst thing ever to be thought up in baseball
yeah, yeah… These were all a long time ago. but still…
All catchers should be forced to wear that.
so…two jobs and other responsibilities has made this a harder thing to get around to then I had hoped, but I finally watched my official first baseball game, start to finish, this weekend. It was the game between the Mets and the Giants.
I rather enjoyed it, but I did have to pay attention and even rewound it at a few parts to figure out what happened in a few instances, but overall I enjoyed it. The daughter and I are going to see a minor league game in person in a few weeks, and I think it’ll be easier to follow when I can see the whole field at once.
One thing that annoyed me to no end—the announcers with their endless spouting of statistics. Is everything some kind of record? “The Giants have never won a game on a Sunday against the Mets when Joe Schmoe was pitching and the wind was out of the East, unless the score was 3-5 in the fifth inning” seemed to me the kind of thing these announcers would find noteworthy. And at one point, we actually missed a pitch because they were busy chatting it up with some yahoo about Twitter.
Anyway, some questions:
What is that shin-guard thing the batters all wear? I mean, I guess it’s a shin guard, but why do they need extra padding only in that one spot when batting?
What, specifically, defines an ‘error’? And why is it such an importan statistic that it needs to be on the screen so often?
Not all of them wear one, but it’s to protect their legs from foul balls coming off their bats and hitting them in the leg, which happens more often than you would expect, and can, as you can imagine, really hurt like a bastard.
An error is when a fielder fails to make a play that should have been made with ordinary effort (e.g. the fielder drops an easy fly ball) or commits a blunder that allows runners to advance one or more extra bases (e.g. a fielder accidentally throws a ball away and the runners advance.)
Errors are assigned as the discretion of the official scorer. Mental errors are not counted - for instance, throwing to the wrong base, or an outfielder who doesn’t catch a fly ball because he initially started running in the wrong direction.
Their prominence in baseball broadcasts is actually something of a historical artifact. Way back in the olden days, errors were much more common than they are today, due to smaller gloves, lousier playing fields, and just generally less capable fielders. Errors were a very significant part of baseball, and the difference between good fielding teams and bad ones could be dramatic. In the 1920 season the average American League team made about an error and a half per game, and the difference between the best and worst teams was 84 errors, which is a heck of a lot. So, errors were important.
Today, errors are much less frequent. No team in the major leagues will average an error a game this year, or even come close, and the difference between the best and worst teams will amount to 40 errors or so. But they’re still much talked about because, well, they always have been. It’s a game of tradition and history.
It’s common for batters to hit foul balls off their shins and ankles. This is painful at best, and can lead to serious injury at worst. I witnessed Jermaine Dye suffer a broken leg from a foul ball he hit off his shin. Not all batters wear shin or ankle guards, by the way.
An error is a defensive misplay that gives the offensive team some sort of advantage. The misplay usually involves a missed catch or a bad throw. For a misplay to be ruled an error, the play is supposed to be one that would normally be made with ordinary effort - for example, it’s not an error if a player has the ball tip off the end of his glove while diving after the ball after running 50 yards to catch up to it. Mental mistakes (such as throwing to the wrong base) are not counted as errors. The rulebook has a lot of special cases for when a misplay should and should not be considered an error - these aren’t things that a beginning fan needs to worry about.
Some people (including me) don’t think errors are important. They are supposed to indicate the quality of defensive play, but they don’t do a good job of that. For example, there isn’t any difference in outcome between a play where the shortstop doesn’t get to a ground ball because he’s poorly positioned and one where the ball is hit right to him but goes through his legs. The latter is counted as an error and the former isn’t, although in both cases the batter ends up on base. I think errors do a fair job of indicating how sure-handed a fielder is once he gets to the ball.
Errors also affect a pitcher’s earned-run average, which is a measure of how many runs a pitcher allows to score per game. Earned runs are those that would have scored with errorless play. In an inning where runs scored after an error occurred, the official scorer figures out how many runs would have scored if the error hadn’t happened. This seems to make sense - why charge the pitcher with runs that were someone else’s fault? Unfortunately, this can (and sometimes does) lead to absurd situations where the pitcher allows a bunch of runs after an error and isn’t charged with any of them. This is only one of the reasons why ERA is a flawed statistic.
Piker I might be, I find I like interleague play – largely because I’m a fan of an NL team and I love watching AL pitchers flail around when they’re at the plate.
batsto, the statistical obsession of baseball fans is legendary. There are a number of reasons for it that come to mind. First, baseball is a game where it’s possible to track them. Football plays are successful when all 11 guys do something right – while the receiver gets the glory, a mistake by one offensive lineman early on the play would lead to a very different result. In baseball, you can see exactly how this pitcher or hitter responded to *this * situation in the past because each player – esp. the pitcher and the batter – makes an identifiably individual contribution.
Second, as you’ll start to understand as you get more familiar with the game, seemingly small changes in the siuation of the game have big effects. For instance, many pitchers change their pitching stance when there are runners on base (because they want to deliver the ball more quickly so as to prevent a steal). This may change their velocity and precision enough to make them much less effective. Some pitchers/hitters will be more affected by this than others, and the increasingly detailed statistics attempt to predict how the current situation will change things. Certainly some of this is overdone, but it’s not only interesting to the fans, it can be useful to the manager who uses this information to make player substitution decisions.
Indeed, this is the type of thing earlier posters were getting towards when they said it’s an easy game to learn but becomes more complex the more you know about it. Feel free to ignore that stuff at the beginning.
Finally – as to whether it’s better to leran the game live or via television, I think both are useful to the new fan. I liked baseball my whole life, but only started paying serious attention a few years ago. You see different parts of the game live vs. on TV. On TV you can see the pitches – where they go, why it’s worth swinging at one vs. another – much better than you can live. But in person you see fielding position better, plus it’s easier to immerse yourself in the drama of the game.
–Cliffy
Another thing that is important to understand about baseball: announcers suck.
Just saw this semi-zombie thread and thought I’d throw in my two cents.
Probably not the best book for a beginner—quite possibly more than you’d want at this point. (He can take pages analyzing a single at-bat.)
One good (though slightly out-of-date) book addressed to the same audience as Baseball for Dummies is Tom Glavine’s Baseball for Everybody.
I also really enjoyed Buzz Bissinger’s Three Nights in August (though that’s partly because I’m a Cardinals fan): accessible, readible, dramatic, insightful.
If there is one thing baseball is…it’s a game of statistics. It is actually one of the more famous things it is known for. Math people, accountants, and super hardcore baseball lovers (RickJay probably) keep all kinds of stats. You can also blame a little bit of that on the rise of computers, 24-hour sports talkers, and websites like Stats inc.
Some of the important stats for a beginner to pay attention to would be (how it looks on the page in parenthesis):
Hitters:
-Their batting average (.235 BA). It’s the percentage of times they get a hit vs when they don’t. The higher the better obviously. RickJay will probably correct me on this, because I don’t totally know but anything in/around/under a .230 or so is considered bad. .250 or so is pretty average. .280+ is good.
-How many home runs they have hit (10HR). This is a good stat to see because when he is up to bat you can maybe count on him to hit a homer, as opposed to someone with a low count.
-How many strikeouts they get (15 Ks). This kinda says two things depending on the BA. If the strikeout count is high then they are either swingers (usually high HRs) so it’s an all-or-nothing kind of thing; or if the HR count is low than they could be lookers and don’t do much of anything. There are a ton of other factors (walks for example) that add in to this, but I’m keeping it simple.
-How many walks they get (10 BBs). This is how good their eye is. A lot of this is connected with the above three stats, but overall if the count is high then he gets on base a lot, which is good, if the count is low than he is probably a high strikeout guy, which I already explained.
Pitchers:
Earned Run Average (3.45 ERA). This is the opposite of a BA. This is how many players get hits off of this pitcher, on average, every time he pitches. The higher the stat the worse it is, the lower the better. There isn’t really an average for this since it depends a lot on outside factors; But overall High=Bad Low=Good.
Strikeouts (5 Ks). The more the better.
Walks (3 BBs). Walks (or Base on Balls, hence the BB) are usually bad. If the pitcher walks a lot of guys then he could get scored on a lot. High=Bad Low=Good.
Fielding
Errors (3 E). This was already explained to you, but it’s pretty much the only fielding stat that matters. High=Bad Low=Good.
Sorry if a lot of this info is re-hash, but you can go blind on stats in this game…I just tried to simplify it a wee bit.
I appreciate all the help. I’m not sure if I’ll have a chance to see a game this weekend (do they play on Memorial day weekend anyway?), but I’m looking forward to the live games next month.
At any rate, my daughter certainly enjoyed watching a game (finally) with her old man. (She actually doesn’t know that much more about the game then I do, but she’s a Mets fan because her grandfather is. Personally, I didn’t really care who won the game, but I was glad for her when the Mets won.)
ERA doesn’t say anything about opponents batting average (there’s a separate statistic for that). It’s the number of earned runs (runs scored without the help of errors) the pitcher gives up, averaged over nine innings.
Except for a few days in mid-July for the All-Star break, there are Major League Baseball games literally every single day between April and mid/late October. (On memorial Day this year, every team is playing.) And of course that ignores minor league games which you might be able to catch either live or on TV.
–Cliffy
To add to Cliffy’s comment:
Memorial Day weekend games are typically above-average in attendance. Because so many people are off work for the holiday, there will be a lot more afternoon games Monday than on a typical weekday. Check out this week’s schedule, which features times, matchups, locations, and relevant links for all major-league games during the next seven days.
You can also see that ESPN has national broadcasts tomorrow (Cubs at St. Louis) and Sunday (Milwaukee at Minnesota). The latter game is an example of the regular-season interleague play that has both proponents and detractors throughout the ranks of fans, including some who’ve weighed in during this thread.