Baseball is the national pastime, but it’s also much more. It’s the ongoing story of 30 teams battling for all the best players (and then, once they have them, trying not to screw things up). It’s the story of a few hundred men from modest backgrounds competing for extraordinary wealth and historical significance. It’s the story of a game that, more than any other, can transform the lives of the players and fans alike.
In a typical Major League Baseball season, teams play 145 games—13 each against the other teams in their division and six or seven each against the other 10 teams in the league. That’s in addition to the games a team plays against its interleague opponents, which typically involve two home series and two away series.
The game begins when one team (the “team in the field”) distributes its defensive players around the field, and the other team sends members “to bat,” one at a time. The batter stands at home plate and attempts to hit the ball thrown by the opposing pitcher, who is standing on the pitcher’s mound. The pitcher must deliver the ball within a certain region, called the strike zone, which is defined by the distance between the batter’s shoulders and knees. The batter can also be hit by a pitched ball that is above or below the strike zone, or by a batted ball that is wild (meaning that it leaves the field of play and no field player was able to reach it).
Once the batter hits the ball, he or she becomes a base runner, and runs the bases in order. If he or she touches all four bases and then comes back to home plate without being tagged out, the team scores a run. Each team has a different lineup each game, and the original batter is not permitted to come up again until the next turn in the batting order.
There are lots of details that make up the rules and strategies of the game, from how a base runner must touch each of the bases to avoid being tagged out by the opposing team’s players, to how a catcher signals the pitcher with secret hand gestures to direct the batter’s swing. But the basics are pretty easy to understand: the object of the game is to score more runs than the other team.
It’s important to know the positions on a baseball team so that you can see why players are doing what they’re doing when watching a game. Think of it as a cheat sheet—a concise set of notes you can refer to when you or a friend are stumped about why a particular play just happened. It will help you better enjoy America’s favorite pasttime.