⚽⚾A Baseball Guide for Futbol Fans

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A Baseball Guide for FUTBOL Fans

How in the world can baseball be compared with futbol? It can be done, and here is a Baseball Guide for Futbol Fans.



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Background

At some point during the April 8th edition of the Daily Crypto Markets Live Blog, @taskmaster4450le commented that it was Opening Day for Major League Baseball in North America. While the comment was off-topic, he reminded everyone that baseball is big business in the United States, which is absolutely true.

After a few replies, @tokenizedsociety admitted that he didn't understand the rules of baseball and LOL'd. In his defense, Brazil isn't known as a place for baseball, and futbol is the preferred sport. Also, many Americans don't understand the rules of baseball, either.

I tried being brief in explaining how the rules for game play are actually trivial and what makes it complicated are the tactics and strategies employed by managers trying to outsmart each other. @tokenizedsociety meant that he didn't understand the scoring used in baseball.

💬 When I tried to explain baseball scoring in a reply you can guess what happened....

So this post is partly my comment to his reply and partly a fundamental explanation of baseball to fans of futbol, "the beautiful game." While there is much more I can explain, I can leave out those details for this post to Sports Talk Social.

Football, "Football," or Futbol? I Choose Futbol

Football means one thing in the North America and something else in the rest of the world. The rest of the world calls football played in North America American Football; meanwhile, North Americans call football soccer. On top of that, both varieties of football are different from what is played in Australia and New Zealand.

To avoid confusion for myself in writing this post, I will use the term futbol to refer to the game whose most important championship is the FIFA World Cup.

A Few Words about Baseball

Even if a game of baseball is limited to the fundamentals, that's still a lot of rules to follow. In this way, a game of baseball can be likened to an 19th Century dApp operating on an analog smart contract with rewards offered in real money (gold and silver).

Being more complicated than futbol, baseball depends on an extensive set of rules. While many of the rules are highly technical or obscure. this post covers only the fundamentals.

While baseball is not as universally played as futbol, it is played around the world on a regional basis:

RegionRepresentative Nations
Mainland North AmericaUSA, Mexico, Canada
The CaribbeanDominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Curaçao
Latin AmericaPanama, Venezuela
Far East AsiaJapan, South Korea, Taiwan

In those areas there are top leagues where professional baseball is big business, or at least popular at the university level. Although baseball can be found in pockets of Europe, Africa, the Near East, and Australia, the game isn't as developed in those areas. The exposure baseball receives in those regions comes in the form of international tournaments along with television feeds to the more mature baseball regions.

Explaining Baseball to Fans of Futbol

Before trying to explain to someone virtually unfamiliar with baseball how the game is played, I thought it would be a good idea to show how it compares to the more familiar game of futbol. On the surface these two games are as different as any two games can be from each other. However, there are comparisons which can be made between futbol and baseball.

Futbol versus Baseball

Below is a table comparing the 2 sports across a number of categories:

FutbolComparisonBaseball
Nearly universalPopularityWorldwide on a regional basis
11 playersStarting Lineup9 players
11 playersReserves16 players:
⚾ 12 pitchers
⚾ 4 fielders
PitchField name"the diamond" (infield) and the outfield
YesClock used?No
2 Halves# & Unit of playing time9 Innings
45 minutes (plus injury time)Duration of playing unitTeam on offense makes 3 outs
1 Overtime (Sudden Death)Extra TimeExtra Innings (equal between teams)
FluidTransition between Offense and DefenseAlternating
GoalScoring UnitRun
AssistAssist to Scoring UnitRun Batted-In (RBI)
Shots on GoalOther Scoring Stats⚾ Hits (singles, doubles, triples, home runs);
⚾ Walks (a.k.a. bases on balls);
⚾ Hit by Pitch ("Ouch!");
⚾ Stolen bases
SaveScore-stopping playsOut
Goaltender/GoalieScore-stopping playersThe entire defensive lineup
Any player on offense (including goaltender)ScorersBatters and base runners in any inning
RefereesOfficiatingUmpires
Yellow CardsPenaltiesAs determined by the umpire
Red CardsEjection"The Thumb" (ejection made by the umpire)
"...watching a movie.""Watching a game can be compared to...""...reading a book."
About 2 hoursTelevision DurationUsually over 3 hours
👀 Why So Many Pitchers? 👀
The number of reserve pitchers used to be less as recently as 1994. Since then, pitching has become hyperspecialized. While this reduced the number of reserve fielders, it opened opportunities to players who were able to field multiple positions. These multi-purpose players gave the manager (head coach or tecnico) greater flexibility in forming both starting lineups and in-game substitutions due to tactical situations or injuries.

How a Futbol Match Advances To Completion

Futbol is timed with a clock. When time runs out, the half is over. A separate clock is used to track stoppages due to injuries. This time is added to the regular time to make up for the delay in game play. When injury time runs out, the half is truly over. After intermission, the cycle repeats. After 2 halves, whichever team scored more goals is the winner.

👀 Note 👀
⚽ If tied after 2 halves, an overtime period is played.
⚽ If tied after overtime (or after a shoot-out), the game ends in a tie.

How a Baseball Game Advances To Completion

  • Both visiting and home teams take turns being the offensive team-- the team batting.
  • The team at bat has to score runs before reaching 3 outs in an inning.
  • For each team, there are 9 innings in a game.
  • After 9 innings of play-- and the home team had its chance to tie or win-- whichever team scored more runs is the winner.
👀 Notes 👀
⚾ If the score is tied after 9 full innings, then extra innings are played until the tie is broken after a full inning of play.
⚾ A game is considered official when 5 complete innings have been played. Shortened but official games occur for reasons ranging from bad weather to power outages.
⚾ Games with less than 5 completed innings are incomplete games; these are finished (or, if necessary, restarted) at a later date. If these incomplete games have no playoff implications by the time the date arrives, these incomplete games may be cancelled altogether.


Diagram of baseball diamond drawn using text
Diagram of baseball field and defensive lineup designed by @magnacarta

Baseball Players on Defense

When a baseball team plays defense, 9 players take the field to play their positions:

PositionPlayerLocation
PPitcherPitcher's Mound (center of the baseball diamond
CCatcherBehind Home Plate and 60 feet 6 inches away from the pitcher's mound
1BFirst BaseCorner of diamond to left of pitcher's mound (as seen from Home Plate)
2BSecond BaseBehind the pitcher and between 2nd Base and 1st Base
SSShortstopBehind the pitcher and between 2nd Base and 3rd Base
3BThird BaseCorner of diamond to right of pitcher's mound
LFLeft FieldThe 1/3 of the outfield closer to 3B
CFCenter FieldThe 1/3 of the outfield behind 2B
RFRight FieldThe 1/3 of the outfield closer to 1B

8 out of these 9 players are there to help 1 player record outs: the pitcher.

🔑 Key Point
It's the pitcher who causes the game to advance by throwing strikes which lead to outs, and recording 3 outs for every inning pitched. Over 9 innings, the pitcher (actually, all the players at the P position that game) will have recorded 27 outs. Whichever team has more runs after recording 27 outs over 9 innings is the winner.

If tied after 9 innings, then extra full innings are played until the tie is broken and the home team had a chance to go head or re-tie and move ahead for good.

The pitcher is there to dare the offensive player-- the batter-- to hit the ball and get on base to maybe put a run on the scoreboard.

When the pitcher throws a pitch, these are the following outcomes for any pitch:

OutcomeDescription
StrikeBatter swings and misses
StrikeBatter doesn't swing, but umpire calls a strike
Foul BallBatter hits the ball outside the diamond and foul lines extending through the field
Foul BallBatter doesn't swing, but umpire calls a foul ball
Re-doBall is hit out of bounds and umpire says to pitch again
Hit by PitchP hits batter by mistake (or on purpose), and umpire awards batter First Base
Intentional WalkPitcher and catcher agree to give the batter First Base by throwing 4 pitches way out of the strike zone
OutBatter reaches 3 strikes, thus striking out
OutBatter hits the ball at one of the other 8 players
OutBatter hits the ball past one player, tries to reach an extra base, then is tagged out
OutP ignores the batter to throw to a fielder who then tags out a stray base runner

3 strikes, and the batter is out. 3 x 3 strikeouts, inning is over. Outs don't always happen this way, but this is what puts fannies in the seats for most baseball fans.

🔑 Key Point: Strikes versus Balls
How can the umpire call a strike against a batter if the batter did not swing? One major responsibility of the home plate umpire is to determine if a pitch made was a strike or a ball. What determines which is which is a guide the umpire uses called the strike zone:
⚾ This will vary from batter to batter, but any pitch within the strike zone is a strike, and 3 strikes lead to an out.
⚾ Any pitch outside the strike zone is called a ball, which essentially means the batter has another chance to make a hit or get a strike against him.
⚾ Not including do-overs as determined by the umpire, a batter can get called out after 3 strikes or awarded a base on balls after 4 balls.
⚾ The umpire tracks the balls and strikes against a batter, when the count reaches 3 balls and 2 strikes, this is called a full count.
⚾ Although a full count includes 6 pitches (3 balls and 2 strikes and the final pitch), the full count does not reflect balls put out of play or do-overs as instructed by the umpire. Some at-bats can last well over 12 pitches.

Baseball Players on Offense

Players go to bat one at a time. If a pitcher gets the first 3 batters of an inning out, the inning ends for the team at bat. It could take as few as 1 pitch for each of the 3 batters, or it could take over 12 pitches per batter if they keep hitting the ball out of play-- and that's if the pitcher only faces 3 batters.

As soon as a batter reaches first base-- either with a hit, or by base on balls as declared by the umpire, or by being hit by a pitch-- the 4th batter enters the game, and the cycle repeats until Out Number 3 is recorded in that inning. Sometimes all 9 players in the starting lineup get to bat in an inning. Once in a while, a few players get to bat twice in the same inning. The inning continues until the 3rd Out is recorded.

When the batter records a hit, the batter becomes a base runner. Where the batter ends up depends on what kind of hit is made:

HitDescription
Single ♦Ball gets past the defense and batter only has time to reach 1st Base
Double ♦♦Ball gets past the defense and batter has time to reach 2nd Base
Triple ♦♦♦Ball gets past the defense and batter has time to reach 3rd Base. Triples are rare.
Home Run Ball stays fair, but it's hit so far that it reaches the stands. It's these HRs which also put fannies in the seats, and they are more common.
Inside-the-park Home Run ⌂!Ball gets past the defense and batter has time to reach Home Plate from the Batter's Box. Like Triples, Inside-the-park HRs are rare.

Home Runs can take place with 1, 2, or 3 runners on base. All can be described as base-clearing Home Runs (since the batter is also counted as a base runner). If 3 runners are on base when the batter hits a Home Run, then the Home Run hit is called a Grand Slam since it puts 4 runs on the scoreboard.

🔑 Key Point: Productive Outs
Often, a batter makes an out with runners on base. If the batter strikes out or hits the ball at a fielder, that adds pressure to the next batter to make a hit. However, if a batter who is called out is able to advance a base runner or two to the next base, that's considered a productive out. The name of the game is to score runs, and productive outs help to do that. Disciplined players work to achieve productive outs, but if they result in hits then even better.

There's more a fan of other sports (especially futbol) can learn about how baseball is played, but it's beyond the scope of this post.

Stealing Bases: Base Runners Getting Greedy

It's possible for a base runner to advance with no hit being made and with no base on balls being awarded to a batter: the base runner simply steals the next base.

While it helps to be fast on the base paths to outrun the throws by the pitcher or fellow fielders, speed alone isn't enough. The base runner needs to have a keen sense of timing and above-average situational awareness. Slow runners have been known to steal bases on the strength of their baseball accumen.

👀 Where Did the Pitcher Go? Meet the Designated Hitter 👀
The pitcher who took the field for defense was also a batter on offense. At least, that was the case from the game's beginnings in the 19th century through the early 1970s. At that time, the designated hitter (DH) rule was made part of the game at the major league level. Due to the controversy surrounding the DH Rule, it was adopted by the American League but not the National League. According to the DH Rule, one fielder is removed from the batting lineup and replaced by a DH. Normally the DH would replace the pitcher, but on rare occasions a non-pitcher is replaced on offense by the DH.

Just My Two Sats

Despite being radically different in game play and style, futbol and baseball have more in common than we realize at first glance.

Before explaining how scoring is done, it was important to understand how offense and defense are handled in baseball. Since baseball doesn't use a clock, progression takes place when certain conditions are met. In this way, a game of baseball can be likened to an 19th Century dApp operating on an analog smart contract with rewards offered in gold and silver (the money of the day).

Out of 9 defensive players, one of them-- the pitcher-- is charged with daring the offensive player (the batter) to reach base and then score a run. The pitcher (or pitchers) need to get 3 batters out in an inning, and that needs to be done over 9 innings for a total of 27 outs. Whichever team has more runs on the scoreboard after 9 innings is the winner. If necessary, extra innings are played until a tie is broken and the home team had a chance to break the tie or overcome a lead occurring in extra innings.

Scoring runs is the name of the game, but there are many ways to score a run (including bases on balls, stealing bases, and productive outs).

Just knowing these details about baseball will make the game more interesting to follow even on a casual basis once in a while. If a futbol fan doesn't have the patience to sit through a baseball game-- and, frankly, even some baseball fans feel the same way at times-- the game can be followed after the fact thanks to various forms of sports media. Even if the finer points of baseball remain a mystery, this guide should be enough to help a futbol fan gain a fundamental understanding of what happens during a baseball game.


Thank You for Reading.  Keyboard Warriors Wanted.


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