How do you Explain Baseball?

By Tyler Savage

Nine times out of ten, you will be seated in front of some real annoying people at a Twin’s game. It’s the drawback of going to a live game, you always have to worry about who you are going to be seated a foot away from. Sometimes, the baseball gods smile down at you, and you get interesting people sitting next to you and it’s fun to eavesdrop.

This happened to me at Saturday’s game at the Dome. Here is the background knowledge; there were three people behind me--two guys and one girl. The girl and one of the guys were from Canada; the other guy was from Europe. The girl did not talk much, but the two guys did, and after listening to the conversation, I realized just how complicated our great sport of baseball is. Here are some excerpts from their conversations, we will call the Canadian Guy: Can (for Canada), and we will call the European guy: Eur (for Europe).

Enter group to section 210, sit behind Tyler and his wife

Can: So, you have never been to a baseball game before?

Eur: No…I have never even watched a game on TV.

Can: Well..I’ll teach you everything that there is to know.

Ball gets hit

Eur: So, is the ball hard or soft?

Can: Oh…the ball is very hard, like a rock.

Eur: Is it a rock?

Can: No, it is made of wound string.

Game continues, pitcher pitching

Eur: So how many pitches do they get to hit the ball?

Can: Well, they get three strikes to hit the ball, if they get three strikes they are out.

Eur: They only get three pitches?

Can: Well…no, they have a thing called balls too, they get four balls, and then they get a free base if they get four balls.

Eur: How do we know if it is a ball or a strike?

Can: Well, there is this invisible box called the “strike zone”…

Eur: (cutting off Can) Wait…wait…wait…what do you mean “invisible box”?

Can: Well, if the ball crosses the batter from the knees to the waist it is a strike, as long as the ball crosses the plate. That guy standing behind the catcher judges the strike zone—they’re called umpires.

Eur: Are they good at doing this?

Can: (laughing) Yeah (sarcastically)

Eur: So are all of these players professional baseball players?

Can: Yes, they make a lot of money, even the lowest paid players.

Innings pass…Can continues to tell all about errors, tagging up (this one took awhile), and home runs.
Later, Torii Hunter hits a routine groundball to the shortstop and is thrown out jogging to first base. Let’s rejoin our conversation:

Eur: Hey…wait a minute…why didn’t that guy run to the base, he was only jogging!

Can: Well…yeah, that is very common too. If the player knows that he is going to get out, they just kind of jog to the base.

Eur: Why would they do that?

Can: I don’t know…they just know that they are going to get out, and it’s not worth the effort to run all the way to the base.

Eur: So why don’t they just drop the bat and walk back to the dugout?

Can: Well, it’s tricky…they have to make it look like they are somewhat trying, so that they can earn those millions of dollars that they are making.

Eur: This game is very confusing to me; you would not see that in cricket.

The comedy continues up to the crescendo of the evening, it is between innings and the teams have just run off the field.

Can: So are you starting to understand a little bit?

Eur: Yes… I think…

At this point a large Dodge Truck drives onto the field for the between innings game where they try to bounce a baseball into the cab of the truck.

Eur: What is this? Why is there an automobile on the field? Do they drive trucks in this game too?

Can: (laughing) No, this is just like a game they play between innings.

Eur: Games? I do not understand.

Can: Yeah, between innings they give away stuff to fans, I guess it’s weird now that I think about this.

Eur: This game is very confusing.