Strike three!
The
first time when I visited Canada over a decade ago, I came upon a park
that had an empty baseball/softball field in it. I immediately walked
up to the pitcher's mound and for a while pretended to be Charlie
Brown. Fast forward to today and there are a few fields around here in
a comfortable walking distance, and occasionally in a summer evening
when I have been taking a stroll I have sat down and watched a few
innings of some friendly neighbourhood league and high school games.
When the high school girls team "Cawthra A's" was playing, I chuckled a
little for this name with a touch of double entendre and occasionally
looked around to see if Quagmire is perhaps sitting somewhere going
"giggedy-giggedy".
Baseball is a very American game and the national pastime, but you might not know that the Finnish version of the game, "pesäpallo", is similarly Finland's national ballgame. The basic structure of the game is otherwise the same as in baseball (as it was developed from it in the 1920's by combining it with a couple of old Finnish ballgames and make the game so that it prepares schoolchildren for later military training), but the field is of a different shape, and the distances between bases are not the same, but the first base (eh eh heh) is closer to home than the third base (uh uh huh). Another important difference is that in pesäpallo, a fair ball that flies over the end of the field is not a home run but simply a foul ball, so the game is not a force hitting contest. A home run happens in the hitter reaches the third base as a result of his hit, but this really cannot happen unless the outfielders somehow fumble a throw to a base and the ball flies away from the field, which is extremely rare in the major league.
The pitching mechanism of the game is different so that instead of a pitcher and a catcher (uh huh huh, eh heh heh) there is only a pitcher who stands next to the plate on the ground between the pitcher and batter. The pitcher thus has a dual role, since he is the baseman at the home base whenever the ball is somewhere in the field. To make a pitch, the pitcher pitches the ball straight up with an underhand motion, and the pitch has to hit the plate when it comes down to be legal. So whereas in baseball a great pitcher can throw really fast, in pesäpallo a great pitcher can throw the ball really high so that it still remains above the plate. Since the runners in bases often try to steal a base, they start running as soon as the pitcher starts the pitching motion, but the pitcher might be just feigning it and not actually let the ball off his hand. The pitcher might also be tricky and make a pitch that is too low so that it is not considered legal, and the batter has to time to react to it but will not even try to hit, and the pitcher just takes the ball and throws it to the baseman, leaving the hapless runner no chance to reach that base.
I don't really care to watch any kind of sports. But when I was younger I often enjoyed going to watch the games of the local small town team since they were free and my old schoolyard chum whom I knew from the kindergarten up was rapidly becoming the star player. The team has probably advanced now to bigger leagues so that their games are no longer free to attend, but while they were, they were fun to watch.
A couple of times I have tried to watch real baseball games on TV, but they are just too freaking slow and confusing for me. I'm sure that it must be a great game since it has such devoted following, but baseball just doesn't seem to do it for me. The rules of Finnish baseball are much simpler and straightforward and make the whole game faster-paced, whereas in baseball I still don't even understand how many times the pitcher can throw the ball outside the strike zone so that some player gets to advance a base. (Too damn many, that's for sure: the game would improve tremendously if every... whatever a bad pitch is called was automatically an advance.) I am also confused about what happens when some outfielder catches the ball before it has touched the ground (in pesäpallo, all runners who were not in a base at the time of the catch have to advance to the next base, and if they succeed, they just get removed from the field but it's not an out), and I don't understand what is going on when a runner moves back and forth between bases while the two basemen try to surround him. So the fact that he is situated between two bases and the second baseman holds the ball doesn't itself create an out?
Baseball is a very American game and the national pastime, but you might not know that the Finnish version of the game, "pesäpallo", is similarly Finland's national ballgame. The basic structure of the game is otherwise the same as in baseball (as it was developed from it in the 1920's by combining it with a couple of old Finnish ballgames and make the game so that it prepares schoolchildren for later military training), but the field is of a different shape, and the distances between bases are not the same, but the first base (eh eh heh) is closer to home than the third base (uh uh huh). Another important difference is that in pesäpallo, a fair ball that flies over the end of the field is not a home run but simply a foul ball, so the game is not a force hitting contest. A home run happens in the hitter reaches the third base as a result of his hit, but this really cannot happen unless the outfielders somehow fumble a throw to a base and the ball flies away from the field, which is extremely rare in the major league.
The pitching mechanism of the game is different so that instead of a pitcher and a catcher (uh huh huh, eh heh heh) there is only a pitcher who stands next to the plate on the ground between the pitcher and batter. The pitcher thus has a dual role, since he is the baseman at the home base whenever the ball is somewhere in the field. To make a pitch, the pitcher pitches the ball straight up with an underhand motion, and the pitch has to hit the plate when it comes down to be legal. So whereas in baseball a great pitcher can throw really fast, in pesäpallo a great pitcher can throw the ball really high so that it still remains above the plate. Since the runners in bases often try to steal a base, they start running as soon as the pitcher starts the pitching motion, but the pitcher might be just feigning it and not actually let the ball off his hand. The pitcher might also be tricky and make a pitch that is too low so that it is not considered legal, and the batter has to time to react to it but will not even try to hit, and the pitcher just takes the ball and throws it to the baseman, leaving the hapless runner no chance to reach that base.
I don't really care to watch any kind of sports. But when I was younger I often enjoyed going to watch the games of the local small town team since they were free and my old schoolyard chum whom I knew from the kindergarten up was rapidly becoming the star player. The team has probably advanced now to bigger leagues so that their games are no longer free to attend, but while they were, they were fun to watch.
A couple of times I have tried to watch real baseball games on TV, but they are just too freaking slow and confusing for me. I'm sure that it must be a great game since it has such devoted following, but baseball just doesn't seem to do it for me. The rules of Finnish baseball are much simpler and straightforward and make the whole game faster-paced, whereas in baseball I still don't even understand how many times the pitcher can throw the ball outside the strike zone so that some player gets to advance a base. (Too damn many, that's for sure: the game would improve tremendously if every... whatever a bad pitch is called was automatically an advance.) I am also confused about what happens when some outfielder catches the ball before it has touched the ground (in pesäpallo, all runners who were not in a base at the time of the catch have to advance to the next base, and if they succeed, they just get removed from the field but it's not an out), and I don't understand what is going on when a runner moves back and forth between bases while the two basemen try to surround him. So the fact that he is situated between two bases and the second baseman holds the ball doesn't itself create an out?
Baseball on TV is indeed really dull. Try a Blue Jay's Game live with a bunch of guys and some beer...
4 Balls (i.e., bad pitches) means the player can "walk" to first base. If there's a man on first, he goes to second, and if there's a guy on first and second, then they both advance. Bases loaded and a walk means that all runners advance, so third base guy goes home for a point.
When an outfielder, or anyone for that matter, catches the ball before it has hit the ground, it's an out. However, when the fielder catches the ball, the players on base can then START running. You can't leave base until the player catches the ball. If you leave base, thinking that the player won't catch it, but he does, then you've got to get back and "tag" that base, or stay on it. So if someone hits a ball deep to the outfield, and you are on third base, and there were 0 or 1 outs, then you would wait until the ball was caught, then race for homeplate. If there are two outs, then as soon as the ball is hit, you should start running, because it the ball is caught, that'll be the third out.
Players running between bases can happen a couple of ways. One is that the player didn't tag. More common is an attempted stealing of a base. Player on first runs to second, pitcher throws to 2nd baseman, runner turns around and heads back to first, 2nd baseman throws to 1st baseman, runner turns around, etc.
Posted by Anonymous | 2:56 PM
Statistics are in some ways the key to enjoying baseball. It has been the subject of more statistics-gathering than any other sport, indeed quite possibly more than all other organized sports combined.
Peter
Iron Rails & Iron Weights
Posted by Anonymous | 3:46 PM
Baseball on TV is indeed really dull.
I think it was an old Judge Dredd comic where they said that to speed up the pace of the game, the future games were played in Antarctica.
Not only is the game dull, but I forgot to mention in the actual post that it always gives me a queasy feeling in my stomach to watch the pitcher throw a fastball and the batter hitting it. After the pitch, the pitcher doesn't look like he is in a position to see or catch the ball, so does it ever happen that the ball comes straight at him and hits him in the face or something? You can't convince me that that never happens.
4 Balls (i.e., bad pitches) means the player can "walk" to first base.
In my opinion, that's two too many. One of the more frustrating things about watching baseball is the fact that there can be so many balls and all these people just stand around between them.
I read the Wikipedia page "Baseball" and could not find the answer to following question: if the batter hits the ball, does he have to start running to the first base, or can he decide "nah, that's not going to work" and stay home to hit again in another pitch, unless it was the third strike? Meanwhile, the runners can advance if the can. (They can do this in pesäpallo.)
Posted by Ilkka Kokkarinen | 5:06 PM
If the batter hits a fair ball (i.e. ball does not go out-of-bounds) he becomes a runner and therefore has to try to run to the first base.
Still the definitely strangest rule is that you can put an all muscle 150 kg guy to hit and after he has wobbled to the first base you can substitute him with Asafa Powell.
But then again they are selling beer at the ballpark which makes it easier to accept the rules.
Posted by /mek | 9:51 PM