I'm beginning to think about baseball quite a bit. I don't know any names, and I don't even know the details of the rules that well, but I like making attempts to keep up with the Rangers. I also watch the Series every year.

That's about all I know. It's pitiful. I always thought watching games was boring, though. Time to change it and become American. Fuck yeah!

Electromatic, Peter Van Wieren, Clubber, and all the rest of you folk who breathe baseball, where do I begin? There's so much to learn and so many paths to go down. All I know is a few WGN Cubs games and Ranger/Astros games on Fox Sports Southwest over the past decade or so, plus the playoffs.

Just watch as much of it as possible.

you like numbers, yeah?

you shouldn't have any problems.

There's more than numbers to keep up with, as far as I can tell. There's a strange human factor to baseball that I can't figure out.

It seems like the entire game is based around the pitchers, even more so than football is around the quarterback.

Teams with stellar records can walk in and have a horrible day, and teams with bad records can trump the best in the league at any time. I'm not going to research any statistics, but I'd feel safer making bets on football and basketball than on baseball.

To me, showboats define basketball and blue-collar atheletes like Emmitt Smith define football. But there isn't a majority personality in baseball - you have everyone. Hotheads, premadonnas, hard workers, 'roid poppers, loudmouths ... there's something of everything in baseball, and all of those personalities really sharpen the game for me. I always used to watch the games in a bored fashion, poking around on my computer with it in the background or doing whatever, but now I see more of a massive underlying chess-match between managers, pitching staff, everyone ... even the home crowd. I don't understand it, but I want to.

earlier this year paul depodesta, the gm of the dodgers, said he "figured out" catcher's era, which would be the effect catchers have on runs allowed by calling games, etc. if he did it would be a huge step in grasping how luck plays into pitching, etc. intuitively, it obviously matters what pitch is thrown and where it is thrown, but since there is little variation on how many balls in play fall for hits from pitcher to pitcher, and since pitchers tend to allow balls to be put into play in the same spots as each other, it's hard to figure out how it affects things. i was a catcher, and i knew i could help the pitcher succeed more than other guys because i called pitches better. but how did it help? i couldn't tell then and i can't now.

the famous saying is "hitting is about balance and pitching is about keeping hitters off balance." i think this saying illustrates how much more important the hitter is in general in the outcome of the at bat. i don't believe the saying that "great pitching always beats great hitting." i don't believe it because hitters' goals and expectations are different from pitchers.

let me explain: pitchers absolutely have to be able to do one of three things in order to be successful. 1. make hitters swing and miss a lot. 2. throw a lot of strikes and not give up home runs. and 3. make them hit the ball weakly, thus getting out when they hit it.

studies have shown knuckleballers are the ptichers that do 3 the best. they're the only ones who do it in a very meaningful way, actually. if a pitcher can't do any of these things they're not going to last very long. the fun thing about baseball is every year a pitcher who can't do any of these things very well is hugely successful. whether it be storm davis or james baldwin or jon garland, it happens all the time. the same thing happens with hitters because the game is so random. as crash davis said:

"You know what the difference Is between hitting .250 and hitting .300? 1 got it figured out. Twenty-five hits a year in 500 at bats is 50 points. Okay? There's 6 months in a season, that's about 25 weeks--you get one extra flare a week--just one--a gork, a ground ball with eyes, a dying quail--just one more dying quail a week and you're in Yankee Stadium!"

this is the great thing about baseball. hitting isn't like running through a hole and making a cutback. every day of the week you can tell the difference between barry sanders and ron dayne. that's not true with hitters. some days albert pujols will look more like a .200 hitter than christian guzman. why? because we only watch one game at a time. baseball is different from other games in how often the scrub off the bench becomes the hero, and that's what makes it beautiful.

about the human element: i think baseball is different because it's 25 guys on both sides trying to beat humanity into a game that doesn't care about it.

that post brought a tear to my eye, davo

shut up, brian.

I second watch and enjoy. I'm a braves man myself but the rangers are a fun young team to watch. Lots of good young hitters and a good closer, and a fun style. Check out there website, and keep up with wins and losses and their standing in the division and maybe read the paper to learn about the various players, that will give you some feelings of ownership, of them being your team and then just watch and enjoy, becoming emotionally attached can get evil especially if your team falters in the playoffs year after year, but it is really fun too.

The human element is what makes it fun.

Oh man, I can't wait until Clubber sees this sentence.

The best way to understand baseball is to watch intently and listen to what the announcers are saying. There are so many intricacies that fly over the head of people that call themselves "baseball fans."

Pitchers do control the game. I agree with PVW about what they need to do to be successful. Let's also throw into the mix that changing speeds is of utmost importance. The ability to throw the ball 95 miles per hour is quite impressive, but its made even more so when the next pitch comes in at 85 and the batter's timing is so thrown off that he corkscrews himself into the ground.

They say the most difficult thing to do in sports is to hit a baseball. I agree. That thing is coming in at high speeds, darting up and down, side to side and you have to take a 34-inch long round piece of wood and hit it, but you have to hit on the right part of the barrel or the bat will break, or the ball won't go far.

As for teams to watch, I'd say that the easiest thing to do is to follow a team that's games are on all the time. The Cubbies and Braves are probably good places to start.

Whatever you do though, promise us that you won't become a Yankee fan. The last thing this world needs is another deplorable Yankee fan.

I thought the same thing

I'm going to go ahead and disagree with this.
The last thing anyone needs is Tim McCarver's Captain Obvious comments or Joe Morgan's ridiculous assumptions.

Yeah, you really have to pick and choose with which announcers you learn the game from. I know that watchin Jays games, for example, if something weird or rare happens, they do a great job in explaining why the play happened and what the specific rules are in place for. There are so many games where the announcers suck.

I watch mainly Red Sox games, so my announcers aren't idiots. I have McCarver and Morgan. So let's amend what I said earlier and add that you should never watch Games of the Week.

Along with getting to know the details of the game, ans stuff like that, i would also try to get familiar with some of the history of baseball. I have the baseball encyclopedia from 1984 and i learned alot about past players by just flipping through it.

it's an iffy proposition to learn the rules of baseball from announcers. you'd think they have a clue, since most of them either coached or played at the major league level, but goddamn, they don't know shit in most cases.

Infield Fly Rule:
When there are less than 2 outs and runners on 1st and 2nd, or 1st, 2nd, and 3rd and the batters hits pop up on the infield. the batter is automatically out and the runners can advance at their risk.

This rule is confusing to most novices to baseball, so there you go.

Believe it or not, you're not alone. I have a couple friends that HATED baseball when they were 19.. now they are huge fans at 24-25. Baseball is a mature game (sans kyle farnsworth) based on its history more than any other sport. No other sport is so engrained in our culture like baseball. As you learn to embrace it, each new dimension becomes a great new thing to see.

Also, (davo will love this- i think). Numbers. Each number has its own significance, some matter more, others dont- but they can all define the game. The Box Score, is quite possibly, Americas greatest style of writing... you can basically watch a whole game in a 2"x2" square. and everything is record, and everything is kept track of... some serious, some not (omar infante and brandon inge last year set a record for most number of back to back homers by guys whose last names start with "I"- with 2- previous record was zero)

No other sport can play two games in a day. Last year in a tigers double header.. they gave up 21 runs in game one and lost. Jeremy Bonderman pitched a shutout in game 2.