The Random Thread and the Royal Family of Canadia, the USA, and Great Britain

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Don't know your RBI from your ERA? Not sure what hitting a sacrifice fly or making a triple play involves?

Baseball is a simple game complicated by jargon.

 

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THE MAJOR LEAGUES

The Majors are two leagues - American and National - each has three divisions: West, Central and East.

 

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Every team plays every other in their league, and they play more games against those in their division. The leagues don't meet until the World Series, apart from a few specially created interleague games.

 

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The leagues also play an All-Star exhibition game during the mid-season break, with the starting outfield players selected by a fans' ballot.

 

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Each team plays 162 regular season games. They play each other in three or four-game series, and teams often play a string of these away on a road trip.

 

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Each league's three divisional winners are joined by one wild card to make up the league semi-finals, followed by best-of-seven league finals and then the World Series, also known as the Fall Classic.

 

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KEY TERMS - BATTING

AT BATS (AB): Turns at batting. Normally four or five per game for a starting outfield player.

 

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HITS (H): Any time a player connects with the ball and gets to at least first base. This is the most important statistic for a non-pitcher.

 

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I THROW MY HANDS UP IN THE AIR SOMETIMES nah jk honestly who does that...

 

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You don't get a hit if a fielder makes a mistake, known as an error , or decides to throw to another base to get somebody else out, a fielder's choice.

 

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Getting to first is called a single, second a double, third a triple (quite rare), and all the way around is a home run. But they all count as one hit.

 

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A batter who records the rare feat of a single, a double, a triple and a home run in the same game is said to have hit for the cycle.

 

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BATTING AVERAGE (AVG): As in cricket, this is the key measure of player's worth. In short, this is hits divided by at bats.

 

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The average is calculated as a fraction of one, ie. 0.300 (the benchmark of a good player) means the batter gets a hit in 30% of his at bats. Hence, you may see references to a player's average being .300.

 

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Batting averages do not include getting on base via a walk - when the pitcher throws four pitches, or balls outside the strike zone.

 

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Also not counted are sacrifice flies (when a batter hits the ball far enough for a player to score after the catch has been made), being hit by the pitch (which gives you first base), and fielder's choices or errors.

 

[MickeyisBeast]

Now, if my Spanish teacher was offering a trip to ENGLAND to stay with a family, I'd totally get Eimear's family to do it and stay with her and have a blast Red-Soxing it up.

But no. It's a trip to Spain.

Ahh, Spain.
I'd actually love to go to Spain.
I'd probably pick Spain over England.

hell yeah meg! we could stay up all night and look at pictures of Jacoby and talk about the red sox all day everyday :'D

Oh gosh, that'd be a nightmare.

 

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A good batting average is anything over .300; a decent one is about .260; anything below .240 is poor.

 

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Pitchers bat only in the National League (the American League uses designated hitters, who do not field, in their place), and like bowlers in cricket they tend to bat at the end of the nine-man order.

 

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Towards the end of a close game they, and other bad batters, are often substituted so that pinch hitters can take their at bat.