Perhaps you are a newly official American citizen and want to learn about your new home country’s passions and sports.
Alternatively, maybe you are looking for a new hobby or interest and would like to be one of those people who get out there at the weekend, come rain or shine, and train with an amateur league?
Regardless of your motivations, here is everything you could ever want to know and need to know about baseball!
A Brief History of the Game
`A quintessentially North American game, baseball as you know it today has changed very little since its inception, allegedly way back in 1839, by a New York native, Abner Doubleday.
Unfortunately, however, it seems as if Doubleday has been wrongly credited with creating the beloved game of baseball for many decades. In reality, the actual origins are a little more complex.
Ever since the Ancient Egyptians first used a longer piece of rock to hit a smaller one to amuse themselves, the concept of baseball at its heart was born. However, it would be pertinent to note that the American baseball game seems remarkably similar to an early eighteenth-century English game of the same name.
The Development of Professional Baseball
Whatever the truth surrounding how baseball was invented, it was certainly in this country that the game found its place in the hearts and minds of sports fans.
In early 1857, amateur baseball teams in and around the New York and Manhattan area came together to form the professional NABPP (National Association of Base Ball Players), which became the first baseball organization to establish an official championship.
The Importance of Baseball Statistics
In the case of some sports, everything is related and hinged upon the times, with two clear halves of a match, for example, whereby each player on both teams does everything they can to help their side succeed in the allotted amount of time.
With baseball, however, there is no such time limit, so the simplest way of judging an individual player’s performance and the overall skills and showmanship of that baseball team on a certain day, is by looking at the game’s core statistics.
The most common pitching statistics in baseball are:
- GP (Games Pitched): How many times a player has pitched
- ERA (Earned Run Average): How many earned runs have been achieved without error
- PCT (Win/Loss Percentage): The number of wins divided by the total wins and losses
- BB (Base on Balls): How many times the pitcher throws four balls
- H (Hits Allowed): How many hits when pitching
- IP (Innings Pitched): How many innings pitched by a specific player
The most common offensive statistics in baseball are as follows:
- RBI (Runs Batted In): How many times batters allow their teammates to try and score
- SO (Strikeouts): How many times the batter has missed on three pitches
- HR (Home Runs): How many hits result in a home run
- AVG (Batting Average): How many base hits for each bat
- SB (Stolen Bases): How often the base runner advances without the hitter’s help
- 3B (Triples): The number of times the batter hits third base and produces a hit
Fascinating Facts About Modern-Day Baseball
`Nowadays, of course, baseball is a multi-million-dollar business, and as such, there is a rich and every-expanding history of surprising and sometimes, downright unbelievable, facts about this immersive and thrilling game.
Some amazing facts surrounding baseball are as follows:
- As of 2024, more than one hundred countries have some form of baseball league
- The second base is by far the one that is most stolen in professional games
- As of 2024, the NYY (New York Yankees) have won the most games (27 so far)
- Baseball’s unofficial musical anthem is ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’
- Players did not start to wear numbers on their shirts until 1912
- Outside of the US, currently, Japan boasts the biggest professional league
Unlike other games, such as soccer, for example, there is never a guaranteed finish time for baseball matches, and especially if there is a delay due to rain, or extra innings, you could find yourself hanging around and looking at your watch while attending a game.
Many baseball fans usually bring along something to occupy their attention and more importantly, to maintain the excitement and momentum of the game, with one of the most popular activities between innings being playing immersive online games with one of the best Australian online casinos.
Core Playing Positions in Baseball
Just as in the same way as the team manager in a football or soccer match having to think long and carefully about where to place their star players, in the same way as a chess player considers every move, so too do baseball team leaders.
Working from the home plate outwards to the left is the third base, the far-left field, moving around to the center field, then the right field, before coming back into the fool line and finally the first base. The pitching mound is the area just in front and touching the home plate, and behind the pitching mound is the second base.
How Does the Batter Make it to a Base?
`Finally, if you were to summarize what it means to watch baseball, every individual in the crowd’s eyes are usually firmly fixed on the batter and willing them to make it to each base successfully and without mistake or hindrance.
The single, most important, objective of the game for the batter in baseball is to get to the base, and this is when watching a game; certainly, as a newcomer to the sport, it can become complicated to work out what is going on.
When attending a baseball game, you will see players move to a space that, seconds earlier, was unoccupied, which can be for various reasons. The catcher could have obstructed the batter’s swing, and the fielder dropped the ball even though the batter executed their hit perfectly. The umpire calls four outpitches outside the strike zone when the batter is batting or if a pitch within the strike zone hits the batter’s body before the bat itself.