By the time you’re in high school, one coach or another has explained most of the rules to most of the games. That didn’t stop us from playing jungle rules most of the time though.
And just going by this thread, you’re not the only one – but no, singular it is.
By all means don’t just take my word for it, though: you’ve got the whole internet to check it out on.
Had a high school PE teacher give us a pop quiz on the rules of baseball. He was from NYC, so I’m sure he thought it was easy.
Problem was he was teaching in Memphis, TN, where baseball is not such a hot sport (no major league teams, and barely a minor league team in the Redbirds at the time). Oh also, he never actually taught us anything about the rules beforehand (yeah, great “teaching”).
I remember being completely WTF dumbfounded when one of the questions was about which player can “balk.” I hated him so much at that moment:mad:
FYI: He said it was the pitcher, but wikipedia says it can be the pitcher or catcher, so now I’m doubly pissed at him. So many years ago, so many lives wasted…
Wow. I had no idea a catcher can balk. When was the last time that rule was enforced in the majors?
I picked up the rules for my favorite two (baseball and football) mainly by playing with other kids. I was also a bit of a dork, so I actually purchased and read the rule books for both games. Learned a lot that way.
Obviously it’s the PE teacher’s fault that you didn’t pay attention to any of the other batters before or after you. After all, actually watching other people play a game and emulating them would be a crazy way of learning something.
I understand the very basic concept but can’t grasp the details and don’t understand the scoring at all. I understand how you score, but I don’t get how it is that teams sometimes win by runs or sometimes by wickets. It’s baffling.
There’s only one way a catcher can balk: by being out of his designated area before the pitch is on its way. I’ve never seen it called in MLB, but it happens in Little League occasionally.
I grew up a baseball fan, and thought I knew the rules; and certainly knew them well enough to follow and play. But when I became a volunteer umpire and started attending rules clinics…holy crap, there’s all sorts of weird stuff in the rule book. And now I can explain the 13 ways a pitcher can balk, or what exactly the Infield Fly Rule is. I’m the life of the party. 
That’s the thing about baseball. Every time I think I’ve ever heard all the rules, there’s one more I haven’t come across. There was one–and I don’t know if I’m remembering this right, so perhaps someone can help me out. It was the late 80s/early 90s, Cubs playing Montreal (I think). There was a pop fly into center, the center fielder made an amazing catch, but was injured on the play. Another fielder came up, took the ball out of his mitt, and threw it into the infield. If I remember correctly, the play was not ruled an out and the batter was allowed to advance the bases because the catching fielder did not take the ball out of his own glove, or something like that.
Am I just making that up? Does that rule sound familiar to anyone?
Not only did coaches not explain the rules, they didn’t explain how to play the game, and they didn’t explain strategy.
I was geeky and awkward so I rarely knew wtf was going on. The other boys always seemed to know.
I used to hate when a baseball coach would say, “Runner at second! Quick! Where do you throw the ball?” I never knew, but everyone else always did, and the coach would never explain why.
When I was in PE they did explain how to play the games. Once. When we were eight. After that we were expected to know, but…I’ll be honest, remembering how a game I played one week a year was not a priority, so I usually had only a vague idea of what we were supposed to be doing. Sometimes I caught on, other times not as much.
These days, if I need to know how a sport works, I ask guys I like. They seem to enjoy explaining it, so it’s a win in my book.
That would be the right call. It’s not a catch until the fielder demonstrates a voluntary release.
This. Gym class was graded on a strict Pass/Fail basis and the teachers were not allowed to fail anybody unless they repeatedly didn’t get changed, started fights, or were insubordinate. And even then only for the quarter; district policy was that every student passed gym for the year no matter what. In retrospect I don’t even understand why we were expected put any effort at all into learning the rules, or improving our skills or even care whether our team one or lost. I never did any of those. I still got the exact same grade as the jocks who played on the actual sports teams, went to sport camps, and spent most of their free time training for whatever sport they were in.
That’s it. “Voluntary release” was the phrase the sportscasters were using. (Steve Stone and Harry Carey–well, Steve Stone, at any rate. I’m not sure Harry knew where he even was at the time.)
I was made to understand the rules of tennis as a stoner kid who made varsity in HS primarily to goof off with my dubs partner and the coach and have fun, but I still can’t remember the tiebreaker rules for the various grandslam events.
Baseball, I guess I knew sort of from lore, but I only really recently learned the various (multiple!) rules and conventions by tuning in via radio and TV over the past few years – and this is primarily because the play-by-play and/or the color would throw out a term and send me looking to Wikipedia or something.
Football I learned by watching with others recently, and it’s pretty easy, besides. The rules, that is.
In middle school, my PE teacher taught us classes about each sport before we played them. Iirc, there were quizzes involved too. In high school, they didn’t say squat.