About Baseball for Rookies

Baseball for Rookies is for people who know nothing about baseball and would like to learn. The book is written with the beginner in mind. It describes the sport in simple, direct terms without insulting your intelligence. It tells you what you need to know to understand and enjoy baseball. Baseball for Rookies is the ideal book for someone who is just learning the game. It would make a great gift for a baseball fan to give to a loved one or friend as an introduction to the sport.

Baseball for Rookies covers:
The book also has a glossary, and includes interesting tidbits such as stories about some of baseball's most colorful characters, baseball terms that have become part of common English and a description of a typical day at a Major League baseball game.

Here are some excerpts from Baseball for Rookies:

Chapter 1—Framework of the Game

One way a batter may be put out is by strike out. Each time a player comes to bat, he starts with no strikes. If he gets three strikes against him, he is out.

The space above home plate between the batter's knees and chest is called the strike zone. Any pitch that goes through the strike zone without the batter hitting it with his bat is called a strike. It is the job of the home plate umpire to declare when a pitch is a strike—he does this by raising his right hand in the air and shouting “Strike!”.

Chapter 2—Differences Between Baseball and Other Sports

Baseball requires a set of physical skills different from those required in many other sports. Baseball requires excellent hand-eye coordination and very quick reaction times. It does not require tremendous speed (although speed helps), physical stamina (although it helps for players to stay in good physical condition), brute strength (although many of the best hitters are very strong) or size. Michael Jordan, one of the greatest basketball players who ever lived, tried to play professional baseball but never reached the major leagues—he was not able to apply his considerable athletic ability to baseball, partly because his skills were not those required for success in baseball.

Chapter 3—Strategy

There are big differences in batters’ abilities to reach base and hit with power. Some of this is in simple raw ability—some players have better hand-eye coordination than others, and some are stronger than others—but a large part of the difference is strategic.

The best hitters refuse to swing at any pitch they can’t hit unless they are forced to. By doing so, they improve their chances of getting on base and also their power. This means they are able to judge when a pitch will be in the strike zone—good hitters swing only at strikes and let balls go by.
. . .
Pitchers must throw to the corners of the strike zone rather than to the middle of the strike zone. Pitches in the middle of the strike zone are easy to hit. Pitches that are high and inside (high in the strike zone and close to the batter) and low and outside (low in the strike zone and on the far side of the plate from the batter) are the hardest to hit. Some batters hit low, inside pitches well, while others hit high, outside pitches well.

Another important pitching skill is the ability to change speeds deceptively. Hitters rely on timing—they figure out  what pitch is being thrown and time their swing accordingly. If a pitcher uses the same motion to throw the ball at different speeds he will upset the batter’s timing, causing the batter to either miss the ball entirely or hit it weakly.

Chapter 4—Baseball Language

Major league
 Professional baseball is organized into major and minor leagues. Most beginning professional players start in the minor leagues and work their way up to the major leagues. “Major league” has come to mean the highest level of achievement in any field.
Bush league
 “Bush league” is a derogatory term for the lowest levels of the minor leagues. It has come to mean “third-rate” or “low class.”

Chapter 5—What Are All Those Numbers?

Here are the most common combined offensive statistics:

Term
 Abbreviations
 Description
Batting average
 BA, AVG
 Hits divided by at-bats. The frequency at which a player gets on base due to hits, without walks or other methods of getting on base being taken into account. Sacrifice flies and sacrifice bunts are also excluded.
On-base average
 OBA, OBP
 Times on base due to hits, walks, being hit by pitches, divided by plate appearances minus sacrifice bunts. The frequency at which a player gets on base by any means.
Slugging average
 SLG
 Total bases divided by at-bats. A measure of the player's hitting power.
. . .
Players’ batting averages get a lot of attention, but it is not really the best way to judge a hitter's contributions. It has two major flaws: it doesn't take walks into account and it doesn't give extra credit for power. A player who has a batting average of .250 with a lot of walks and home runs is a much better hitter than one whose average is .300 but has few walks and home runs.

Chapter 6—A Day at the Ballpark

In the middle of the seventh inning, there is a tradition called the “seventh inning stretch,” where all the fans stand and stretch their legs until play begins again in the bottom of the seventh inning. . . In most ballparks, they will play the song Take Me Out to the Ball Game during the seventh inning stretch, and people sing along.

Chapter 7—A Major League Season

The regular season starts in early April and ends in late September. During the regular season, each team plays 162 games. Each team plays the greatest number of games against each of the teams in its own division, and fewer games against each of the teams in the other divisions of its own league. Each team also plays a few games against some teams in the other league—for example, each team in the Western Division of the American League might play a few games against each team in the Central Division of the National League.
. . .
The champions of the American League and National League are said to have won the pennant because of a tradition where the league champions fly a banner or flag. . . The two league champions play against each other in a seven-game World Series, to determine the championship of all Major League Baseball.

Chapter 8—How to Read a Box Score

When a newspaper reports the results of a baseball game, it shows summaries of the performances of the teams, and the players on each team, in what is called a box score. One can use a box score to get an impression at a glance of what happened during the game. All newspapers use somewhat different formats for their box scores, but they are similar enough that, once one knows how to read one newspaper's box scores, he can read any other paper's box scores.

Chapter 9—Flakes and Other Characters

Rube Waddell was one of baseball's first and most accomplished flakes. . . He was fascinated with fire engines, and would chase after them—on a day Waddell was scheduled to pitch, a teammate would be assigned to make sure he got to the ballpark and didn't go off chasing any fire engines.
. . .
Casey Stengel was a different type of flake. He was eccentric, but was also quite intelligent. He developed a sort of double-talk that became known as Stengelese.

Here are some choice quotes:
I always heard it couldn't be done, but sometimes it don't always work.
There comes a time in every man's life, and I've had plenty of them.

Chapter 10—A Brief History of the Game

No one invented baseball. The sport is derived from the old English game of rounders and from other similar bat-and-ball games with names like town ball and stool ball (so-called because milking stools were used as bases). Baseball developed over many years and changed a lot over the decades until it took its current form.
. . .
In 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first professional baseball team. The Red Stockings were not members of a league. They were a single team that traveled the country and challenged local teams to matches. They charged spectators for the privilege of watching the matches and paid their players with the proceeds.
. . .
Until 1920, it was much more difficult to score runs in baseball than it is today. Batters didn't reach base as often, and it was harder for runners to score once they had reached base. Home runs were relatively rare. This caused teams to use strategies such as stolen bases, sacrifice bunts and hit-and-run plays quite frequently. It was worth the risk of giving up outs in exchange for scoring a single run. . . Until Babe Ruth came along, home runs were treated as freak plays, or accidents. Players did not deliberately try to hit the ball over the fence. The idea was to hit the ball out of reach of the fielders within the field of play. Doubles were common, and triples were more common then than they are now, but home runs were relatively rare. Ruth showed that it was possible to hit home runs frequently.

Chapter 11—Some of the Great Ones

Ted Williams' goal in life was that, when people saw him walking down the street they would say, “There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.” He came pretty close to accomplishing this goal—many baseball historians consider him to be one of the two best hitters ever. It was either Williams or Babe Ruth.
. . .
Ty Cobb was the greatest player of the dead ball era. He may also have been the worst human being ever to have been a baseball superstar. . . Cobb held many important major league records for decades. For years he held the career records for the most hits, the most runs scored, the most stolen bases and the highest batting average. His batting average is still the highest of all time, although his other records have been surpassed. Season after season, he led the major leagues in batting average, stolen bases, and runs scored.
. . .
Rickey Henderson is widely considered the greatest lead-off hitter of all time. He holds several important career records, including most runs scored, most stolen bases, most walks, and the most home runs leading off games. He also holds the record for most bases stolen in a season. All of these reflect his excellence as a lead-off hitter, whose job it is to get on base and score runs.

Chapter 12—Honors, Awards and Achievements

At the end of every season the Baseball Writers Association of America chooses the Most Valuable Players in the National and American Leagues. The selection is supposed to be based only on the players’ performance in the regular season (not the playoffs).
. . .
The highest honor a player can receive is selection to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Of the thousands of players in the history of the major leagues, only two hundred fifty-four are in the Hall of Fame (as of 2002). Each year, members of the BBWAA consider eligible players for selection. Only sportswriters who have belonged to the BBWAA for at least ten years are allowed to vote.

Chapter 13—Great Moments

The World Series in 1975 was a great match-up. The Red Sox won games one and four, and the Reds won games two, three and five. One more win for the Reds would give them the championship, but the Red Sox had the home field advantage for the two games that remained. Bad weather caused the sixth game to be postponed for three days. It was worth the wait.
. . .
The Oakland Athletics met the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1988 World Series. The A’s were heavily favored to win the Series, one reason being that the Dodgers’ best player, Kirk Gibson, had an injured knee. . . When Eckersley came in to pitch the ninth inning with the A’s leading by a run, it looked bad for the Dodgers. . . Until he was called on to pinch-hit in the ninth inning, Gibson had sat in the dugout with an ice pack on his knee. He was not able to run. If he hit a ground ball, he would certainly not be able to beat a throw to first base. He might even be thrown out at first base if he hit a line drive into the outfield. LaSorda was taking a big risk.