Baseball: The National Pastime

Baseball is worshipped as one of the biggest sports in the US and it certainly has thousands of staunch fans who watch it, bet on it, get emotional over it and do everything but worship the gods of baseball. It is played everywhere from little leagues, the backyards and school fields. In the professional leagues, baseball players who are excellent, have a high standing among their peers.

In this article, we are going to look at how the game is played and how you can teach yourself to be good at it too.

The Rules and Regulations

The game has what is called innings that consist of top or bottom where a ball is hit and one time runs the rounds while the other defends. Usually there are 9 or 6 innings in the games. That way, they can be able to have regularity. Understanding the concept is easy if you are committed.

The Infield        

That is where most of the action takes place and knowing the directions you are supposed to run, where you are supposed to stand and how a foul looks like is paramount. Once you can grasp that concept, you are good to go. So, learn the infield specifics and you are basically golden with the rules.

Baseball: The National Pastime

The Outfield

This is not as complex as the infield. What you need to know about it is that the outlines, the defenders and the foul lines are what you need to watch out for. That way, you can be bale to observe the rules properly and avoid costing your team the game.

Where You Play At

At any given time, there will be 9 players in the field, all of whom will have to bat at some point. You need to work on your swings and know when it’s your turn to defend or bat. Once the ball is hit, the batter will run from the plate around the bases in a counterclockwise order back to home plate to complete a score.

They Is Watching You (Umpires)

This is the watcher and god of the game. What he says goes and he is the one who is responsible for announcing the scores, the fouls and regulating the plays to make sure that no one makes a mistake or plays irregularly.

The Three Strikes Rule

Three strikes and you are out. We have all heard this phrase. Here is how it came to be. When you miss the ball, it’s called a strike. Three strikes and you are out. They should call it a miss…right? Because you missed, get it? Anyway, that is just one of the ways that you can get sent off the field.

Fouls of any and all kinds will also result in you, the offender, missing the rest of the inning. We have other mistakes like: ground out, force out, tag out and fly out. They all result from different offenses that you will have to know and watch out for.

The Three Strikes Rule

Getting Good

You will need a lot of practice drills and they are tedious. But that is how you make yourself great at the game. Without the proper training, you will not be able to do much in the field because there is the pressure on you to hit a home run or something better than a flimsy hit.

The need to train is in every athlete’s body and they will push themselves to make sure that they can nail that ball right. Being like one of the greats is a dream that many children who play harbor in their hearts.

You want to be good? You have to work for it.

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