Billy you lazy fucker.
I typed this before I saw Rone's post, and I know that Frankie, who is a REALLY big baseball fan, and an EXPERT one at that, will have more cogent replies. Nonetheless I am going to hit Submit because I am pot-committed on this post.
jippers wrote:Hi All,
1. What exactly is "bunting"?
Bunting is a technique used while batting. Essentially, rather than swinging at the incoming pitch, you hold the bat horizontally over the plate and let the incoming pitch hit the bat and rebound. It's a way of hitting the ball so it stays in the infield-- the principle is that none of the fielders will be able to run in, scoop up the ball, and throw you out before you can reach a base.
Because it's difficult to bunt and get safely on base, the bunt is often used as a "sacrifice" play. You bunt, knowing you'll be thrown out, but that someone already on base will be able to advance and get into scoring position.
2. Looking at the scoreboard of a game, the columns are labelled "R", "H" and "E". Looking at the Major League baseball site, these are expanded out to be "Runs", "Hits" and "Errors". What constitues an "error"? Does "Hits" include Fouls?
An error is exactly that-- when a fielder screws up. Either they almost catch the ball but then drop it, or when fielding a "ground" ball (one that's rolling on the ground) they fail to scoop it up and it bounces off their shin or something, or when they try to throw it to another fielder and they throw it over his head or something like that. It's somewhat of a judgement call on the person keeping official score. Sometimes a person is not given an error when it appears they should have been. Errors are a way of judging the performance of a team, especially that of a pitcher because the pitcher is very often assigned responsibility for the score of the opposing team. If the pitcher performs really well but loses, it's telling if there were 5 errors. "He pitched well but the team didn't back him up."
3. What's the difference between a ball and a strike? Can a pitcher actually choose to throw a strike or a ball? Or is it luck of the draw based on how it leaves his hand?
Pitching is *really hard* to do well. Firstly, only a very small percentage of the world can throw an object more than 90 mph. And then you have to aim for a specific target. But you can't just have that one target that you can hit over and over, you have to be able to hit anywhere within a range of area near the batter-- with precision. Nobody can do it perfectly. Some can do it fairly consistently. The answer is that sometimes a pitcher can choose to throw a strike or a ball. Other times, physics (humidity, wear and tear on the ball) and biology (throw 80 pitches in a row and see if you're not tired) team up to make it increasingly difficult. A pitcher's ability to throw the ball where he wants to throw it is called his "accuracy". If you watch the movie Bull Durham, you'll note that Nuke has notoriously bad accuracy at the beginning of the movie, though he throws really "hard" meaning he can throw the ball very fast.
STRIKES
While batting, you can't be allowed to stand up there forever until you hit the ball. There must be a penalty for not swinging at a perfectly fine pitch. The way the umpire tells if a pitch was hittable or not is if it passes through an imaginary box called the "strike zone" that is the width of home plate and roughly from the batter's knees to his breastbone.
Part of a pitcher's skill is in being able to throw the ball in such a way that it passes through the strike zone but fools the batter in some way so that he is unable (because he is not skilled enough) to hit the pitch. To do this, the pitcher uses psychology as well as physics. For example, he'll throw three fast balls in a row, and then a slower pitch. The batter (if he's stupid) will have adjusted his swing to hit the fast pitches, so when a slower pitch comes along he'll swing way too early and miss. If you swing at a pitch, no matter how awful the pitch was, it's a strike.
BALLS
Which brings me to balls. Balls are the pitcher's penalty for not throwing a pitch the batter can hit. If a pitcher throws a ball that's out of the strike zone, it's a ball. Get four balls and you automatically are allowed to go to first base. Of course, if the batter is dumb enough to swing at a ball and misses, it's a strike. The pitcher can throw balls on purpose, trying to get the batter to swing. Many batters like pitches that are thrown sort of chest-high, maybe too high for the strike zone. They are surprisingly hard to hit up there, but oh so tempting to swing at.
The pitcher/batter duel is a mini-game in the middle of baseball, with the pitcher and catcher strategizing to get the batter out, and the batter attempting to predict which pitches he's going to get and hit the ball to a place that is helpful to his team. Sometimes that means bunting, other times it means he gets to "swing away" and try to hit the ball just wherever. The fact that pitches come in so fast and are so hard to hit (a *good* batting average means you get a hit 2.5 times out of 10), makes the game a little less predictable and more interesting to watch.
4. How come a foul counts as a strike? Or for two strikes, to be precise?
It's all about encouraging the batter to put the ball in play for everyone to participate. A foul ball is when a batter hits the ball but not into "fair play"-- meaning he hits it out of bounds. When this happens, the batter is trying to put the ball in play so he shouldn't be penalized, but he failed to do so, so he should sort of be penalized. So he gets a "foul ball". Foul balls count as strikes but only twice. After the second foul you can continue to hit as many fouls as you want without striking out. You're still trying to put the ball in play, so that's good. But you shouldn't be allowed to do that indefinitely-- so if the opposing team ever manages to catch a ball in the air, even if it's a foul ball, then you're out. There are a couple nuances to the rules there, but 95% of the time that's all there is to it.
5. What's the difference between the National League and the American league? In fact, how do the fixtures work?
It is mostly an organizational difference. If a new team is ever created, the league they join, National or American, is mostly determined by whether there is room in the league for another team. That's decided by the Commissioner and the owners of the other teams in conjunction. Apart from that, there are a very few rules differences-- the most important being that in the American League the pitcher doesn't bat. Some time back the American League decided that having pitchers bat was boring because they always strike out (pitchers get relatively little practice at batting, only playing once every week or so). So they instituted the "Designated Hitter" rule-- a player whose only job is to bat for the pitcher. Fans of National League teams deride the other league for this rule. And fans of American League teams halfheartedly pretend to endorse the rule out of loyalty, but I suspect most of us know it's kind of bullshit.
6. Who, How or what determines who plays in the "World Series"? Better still, what is the World series? National or American League?
The baseball season is one long tournament, with each League having its own. At the end of the season, the best National League team plays the best American League team to see which is the best out of all Major League Baseball. It's interesting to note that the "World Series" is named not because it's a tournament involving every team on the planet (which would mean America thinks it's the only country on earth that plays baseball) but rather after the newspaper that originally sponsored the tournament.
7. New York seems to have two teams - the Mets and the Dodgers. Do they play in different leagues? They're obviously very different teams, but what is the difference? Does one represent the city of New York and one the State of New York?
Teams, though they are often named after a region or state (the Tampa Bay area of the state of Florida has a team, for example), don't officially play to represent that area. Not officially. But they do represent an area in that many of their fans live around that area. For example people in the part of Pennsylvania where I grew up were almost as likely to be Baltimore Orioles fans as Philadelphia Phillies fans-- simply because we lived closer to Baltimore than Philly, and had more chance to go to Orioles games. And very few of us were Pittsburgh Pirates fans, because that city was four hours drive from use vs. Baltimore's 1.5 hours.
In a city like New York or San Francisco or Los Angeles, where there is a large enough population to support multiple Major League Baseball teams, it's kind of up to you which team you want to support. If you just don't like the way that one player's an asshole, you won't root for the SF Giants, or if you just don't like losing all the time like a sad disgusting loser Met fan, you won't root for the Mets.
HTH,
JB
