Most of this is deadly dull except for the very last piece. Did Posnanski forget who his readers are? I would have liked to hear who the British baseball fans are and how they became fans.
The pitcher has advantages in terms of pitch selection but he has to be very precise in locating it. Because of the batter's skill if that pitch is off by inches, there's a good chance it will result in a hit. Of course that's not always the case and sometimes a perfect pitch is hit. Still it reduces the pitcher's advantage.
C,mon folks. A little more respect for English History. The game of comparison is not cricket, where typical scores look like they were stolen from NBA games where no one played defense. It's rounders. The original name for it was in fact Base Ball. Per Wikipedia: "Rounders is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams. Rounders is a striking and fielding team game that involves hitting a small, hard, leather-cased ball with a wooden, plastic, or metal bat that has a rounded end. The players score by running around the four bases on the field.
Played in England since Tudor times, it is referenced in 1744 in the children's book A Little Pretty Pocket-Book where it was called Base-Ball. The name baseball was superseded by the name rounders in England, while other modifications of the game played elsewhere retained the name baseball. The game is popular among British and Irish school children, particularly among girls As of 2015, rounders is played by seven million children in the UK.
Gameplay centres on a number of innings, in which teams alternate at batting and fielding. Points (known as 'rounders') are scored by the batting team when one of their players completes a circuit past four bases without being put 'out'. The batter must strike at a good ball and attempt to run a rounder in an anti-clockwise direction around the first, second, and third base and home to the fourth, though they may stay at any of the first three. A batter is out if the ball is caught; if the base to which they are running is touched with the ball; or if, while running, they are touched with the ball by a fielder."
It is similar to softball in that the ball is pitched underhand.
This admittedly won't apply to everybody, but to the uninitiated, I'd ask "Do you like to throw things? Do you like to hit things with a big stick? You might get a little thrill out of watching the very best in the world do it."
Thinking back on my own fandom, it started there. Rules, stats, history, rituals, and even a better appreciation for physics and algebra than I ever got in school all fell neatly into place. The foundation all along was a caveman's enjoyment of the very basics.
To the point about the rules, I have found it refreshing to simplify things as I try explaining them to my 6-year-old son, who has so many questions when we watch a game. There will be time for the complicated parts later, if he’s still interested, but it’s great watching the game and keeping it simple with the basic rules.
I've had the fortune of knowing quite a few cricket fans and have had the joy of trading enthusiasm for our games, to the point where I can definitely enjoy and understand a good cricket match, and watch 3 or 4 of them a year.
An English cricket fan should definitely be able to appreciate baseball, and vice versa. The key is that in cricket there is a steady drumbeat of runs and outs are a big deal. In baseball, there is a steady drumbeat of outs and runs are big deal. The rest are details.
This is almost the exact way I’ve explained the difference between baseball and cricket to my wife, who’s from India (she loves cricket and is warming to baseball).
As someone who's been trying to understand cricket, I think your second paragraph has flipped a switch in my brain about the difference in feel of the two sports. Thanks!
The San Francisco Giants defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers that day, according to Google. The pitchers don't appear in the lineup and Hank Thompson appears as someone who led off the bottom of the 1st and never hit again. (Reality check on his at bat...he pinch hit for Sal Maglie.....who, if the Google rendered box score is to be believed....pitched 8 innings of relief after replacing Larry Jansen.
For grins, here's the real box score....although, I'm pretty sure this crowd knows what really happened that day:
I always use the search to identify options for the answer and choose that source. You might say just go to BR to start, but I find that Google does a great job of guiding me right to the BR page I want whereas if I go to BR first it can take me several minutes to find the information I want. But I agree with...the "answer" that the search gives and AI are strongly suspect.
This reminds me of taking an English colleague to see his first baseball game in Atlanta in April 1994. The Braves were facing St. Louis. As I was trying to explain the basics, Ryan Klesko, Fred McGriff, and David Justice hit consecutive home runs in the first inning. I had to sputter that "it isn't always like this."
One of the things that makes that batter-pitcher matchup so fun to me is the thing that I think might've been best illustrated by the Paul Skenes-Shohei Ohtani battles from the other night.
Yes, the pitcher has TREMENDOUS advantages. The way in which he's at a really big DIS-advantage, though, is that one mistake - see that pitch Skenes made to Ohtani that was deposited 450 feet away - and he's sunk. So yes, the pitcher has the advantage on any one individual pitch. But the reason any runs are scored at all is that, if/when that mistake is made, if the batter can do his job correctly, the pitcher pays. The balance in baseball is actually quite similar to soccer (a.k.a. football), in that scoring is hard, but the right sequence of events makes it happen. Now, I would say that the frequency of scoring in baseball makes it more pleasurable to watch, but that's just a personal preference.
Thanks, Joe, for writing another fun post that got me thinking!
I lit up reading this. But even more, it's not just mistakes where the batter can do his job correctly and win the battle. As Justin Verlander vs Pablo Sandoval in 2012 proved: there is no such thing as a futile at bat. If the hitter gets the barrel on the ball with the right trajectory for just one pitch in the AB, he can win the battle despite nothing but really good pitches thrown.
MLB the Show 2023 introduced Negro League players to the game with “Storylines Mode.” The idea is to use MLB the Show to introduce new generations of baseball fans to these historic figures. The first group included Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, Rube Foster, Hilton Smith, Hank Thompson, John Donaldson, Martin Dihigo, and Buck O’Neil. The added 10 more for the 2024 version.
If you found out that a) Alex Bregman is the most comparable player to him and b) Alex Bregman is featured in "MLB: The Show Goes On" in 2094.....would that help?
Not in the least bit. Putting someone into a video game is about marketing, Bregman is pretty much known to any baseball fan, 7 straight post seasons, 2 ASG, 2 top 5 MVP finishes. And yes I see on Baseball Reference that Hank’s most similar is Bregman, I’d contend they Bregmans accomplishments, which are current, dwarf those of Thompson
Will be curious what you think about the games in London but more so the experience of trying to be an MLB fan in London when games start at midnight or if you're lucky you might wake up in time to catch the last innings of a West Coast game. When I was there last summer, I found it really hard to keep up.
i've always been certain that one of the hardest things to do in all sports is to hit a round ball travelling w/unpredicatble movement & velocity 80-100mph with a cylindrical bat, and the 2nd hardest thing is to pitch said ball consistently well- even the greatest hitters have only managed to hit successfully 30-40% of their plate appearances; the really skillfull ones w/good reflexes & great vision (e.g Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, et al) can augment their 30% or so hit percentage w/good percentage of walks...
Brits SHOULD love baseball's sense of tradition, but many i've talked with (i visited 3 wks in '16 & lived there 3 months in '18) just say we bastardized cricket (as if- hitting a round ball w/flattened paddle/'bat' is MUCH easier!!!)
Surprised by the cricket reference. Growing up I kept hearing that the English likened the American game to their game called Rounders. Check it out in Wikipedia. The English game known now as Rounders was originally called Base Ball and includes the four bases as we know them and a run being awarded for any player who safely negotiates all four bases.
I remember reading in baseball history stuff as a kid that Baseball was like Rounders and loosely based on it.
I think most people talk about Cricket today because it is a famous sport still played in Britain and in many countries that used to be part of the British Empire when there was such a thing. There is a bat and a ball in Cricket, and the similarities taper out pretty quickly from there. While Rounders is a playground game that is more similar to kickball (I want it slow and bouncy) except there is a bat, so also early base ball, and no one today knows what it is.
maybe the ones i talked to didn't think i'd know of rounders; i never heard any reference to it- granted, i didn't have the discusssion w/very many and there may have been some ales involved...
Sounds reasonable. It is often thought of as a child's game. Apparently the English National Team (The Talent Team) is for women and girls only. Apparently a game played by people of all genders in Ireland, but not at a professional level.
Something like 20 years ago, USA Today did a special feature on The Most Difficult Things To Do In Sports. They looked at everything involved - skill, endurance, etc. - to settle on a Top Ten. On the list were stock car racing (you may be doing it sitting down, but those cockpits can get up to 120 degrees, and you're getting some SERIOUS g-forces in the turns) and the pole vault (you have to sprint while carrying a long pole, plant the end of the pole accurately, contort your body to go over a rod, and then land safely....).
Number one on the list? Hitting a major league fastball.
Agreed. Even with position players pitching and throwing 80 MPH fastballs at best, it's not like hitters bat .900. It could be argued hitters aren't giving 100% in those spots but also sure Freddie Freeman doesn't want to strike out against a 1B.
yeah... and against position players, oftentimes guys aren't used to seeing pitches at 60-80mph, they've been seeing 90+ smoke all game, so the timing is off, it almost becomes like slow pitch softball, where it looks so meaty, big and eminently bashable coming at you and you just flail away helplessly
In a rout of the Angels a few days ago they chose to have a position player pitch the bottom of the eighth. His first pitch was timed at 45 MPH. He got through the inning without giving up a run.
Most of this is deadly dull except for the very last piece. Did Posnanski forget who his readers are? I would have liked to hear who the British baseball fans are and how they became fans.
The pitcher has advantages in terms of pitch selection but he has to be very precise in locating it. Because of the batter's skill if that pitch is off by inches, there's a good chance it will result in a hit. Of course that's not always the case and sometimes a perfect pitch is hit. Still it reduces the pitcher's advantage.
C,mon folks. A little more respect for English History. The game of comparison is not cricket, where typical scores look like they were stolen from NBA games where no one played defense. It's rounders. The original name for it was in fact Base Ball. Per Wikipedia: "Rounders is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams. Rounders is a striking and fielding team game that involves hitting a small, hard, leather-cased ball with a wooden, plastic, or metal bat that has a rounded end. The players score by running around the four bases on the field.
Played in England since Tudor times, it is referenced in 1744 in the children's book A Little Pretty Pocket-Book where it was called Base-Ball. The name baseball was superseded by the name rounders in England, while other modifications of the game played elsewhere retained the name baseball. The game is popular among British and Irish school children, particularly among girls As of 2015, rounders is played by seven million children in the UK.
Gameplay centres on a number of innings, in which teams alternate at batting and fielding. Points (known as 'rounders') are scored by the batting team when one of their players completes a circuit past four bases without being put 'out'. The batter must strike at a good ball and attempt to run a rounder in an anti-clockwise direction around the first, second, and third base and home to the fourth, though they may stay at any of the first three. A batter is out if the ball is caught; if the base to which they are running is touched with the ball; or if, while running, they are touched with the ball by a fielder."
It is similar to softball in that the ball is pitched underhand.
This admittedly won't apply to everybody, but to the uninitiated, I'd ask "Do you like to throw things? Do you like to hit things with a big stick? You might get a little thrill out of watching the very best in the world do it."
Thinking back on my own fandom, it started there. Rules, stats, history, rituals, and even a better appreciation for physics and algebra than I ever got in school all fell neatly into place. The foundation all along was a caveman's enjoyment of the very basics.
To the point about the rules, I have found it refreshing to simplify things as I try explaining them to my 6-year-old son, who has so many questions when we watch a game. There will be time for the complicated parts later, if he’s still interested, but it’s great watching the game and keeping it simple with the basic rules.
I've had the fortune of knowing quite a few cricket fans and have had the joy of trading enthusiasm for our games, to the point where I can definitely enjoy and understand a good cricket match, and watch 3 or 4 of them a year.
An English cricket fan should definitely be able to appreciate baseball, and vice versa. The key is that in cricket there is a steady drumbeat of runs and outs are a big deal. In baseball, there is a steady drumbeat of outs and runs are big deal. The rest are details.
This is almost the exact way I’ve explained the difference between baseball and cricket to my wife, who’s from India (she loves cricket and is warming to baseball).
As someone who's been trying to understand cricket, I think your second paragraph has flipped a switch in my brain about the difference in feel of the two sports. Thanks!
My first thought after reading about Hank Thompson was "gee, I think he played in the Oct 3, 1951 game."
I used Google to check. Here's what I got back:
https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=giants+dodgers+boxscore+Oct+3%2C+1951&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#sie=m;/g/11j3hx6k4z;4;/m/09p14;dt;fp;1;;;
The San Francisco Giants defeated the Los Angeles Dodgers that day, according to Google. The pitchers don't appear in the lineup and Hank Thompson appears as someone who led off the bottom of the 1st and never hit again. (Reality check on his at bat...he pinch hit for Sal Maglie.....who, if the Google rendered box score is to be believed....pitched 8 innings of relief after replacing Larry Jansen.
For grins, here's the real box score....although, I'm pretty sure this crowd knows what really happened that day:
https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NY1/NY1195110030.shtml
Sorry to be more than a bit off topic...but friendly reminder that Internet search and AI are strongly suspect.
I always use the search to identify options for the answer and choose that source. You might say just go to BR to start, but I find that Google does a great job of guiding me right to the BR page I want whereas if I go to BR first it can take me several minutes to find the information I want. But I agree with...the "answer" that the search gives and AI are strongly suspect.
This reminds me of taking an English colleague to see his first baseball game in Atlanta in April 1994. The Braves were facing St. Louis. As I was trying to explain the basics, Ryan Klesko, Fred McGriff, and David Justice hit consecutive home runs in the first inning. I had to sputter that "it isn't always like this."
I thought for sure the kid's favorite player was going to be Duane Kuiper
I was hoping for Brandon McCarthy
One of the things that makes that batter-pitcher matchup so fun to me is the thing that I think might've been best illustrated by the Paul Skenes-Shohei Ohtani battles from the other night.
Yes, the pitcher has TREMENDOUS advantages. The way in which he's at a really big DIS-advantage, though, is that one mistake - see that pitch Skenes made to Ohtani that was deposited 450 feet away - and he's sunk. So yes, the pitcher has the advantage on any one individual pitch. But the reason any runs are scored at all is that, if/when that mistake is made, if the batter can do his job correctly, the pitcher pays. The balance in baseball is actually quite similar to soccer (a.k.a. football), in that scoring is hard, but the right sequence of events makes it happen. Now, I would say that the frequency of scoring in baseball makes it more pleasurable to watch, but that's just a personal preference.
Thanks, Joe, for writing another fun post that got me thinking!
I lit up reading this. But even more, it's not just mistakes where the batter can do his job correctly and win the battle. As Justin Verlander vs Pablo Sandoval in 2012 proved: there is no such thing as a futile at bat. If the hitter gets the barrel on the ball with the right trajectory for just one pitch in the AB, he can win the battle despite nothing but really good pitches thrown.
Of course this begs the question as to why Hank Thompson is featured in MLB:The Show.
Cool, but inquiring minds would like to know.
MLB the Show 2023 introduced Negro League players to the game with “Storylines Mode.” The idea is to use MLB the Show to introduce new generations of baseball fans to these historic figures. The first group included Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, Rube Foster, Hilton Smith, Hank Thompson, John Donaldson, Martin Dihigo, and Buck O’Neil. The added 10 more for the 2024 version.
Now that makes a lot of sense. Thanks for that information Bobby.
If you found out that a) Alex Bregman is the most comparable player to him and b) Alex Bregman is featured in "MLB: The Show Goes On" in 2094.....would that help?
Not in the least bit. Putting someone into a video game is about marketing, Bregman is pretty much known to any baseball fan, 7 straight post seasons, 2 ASG, 2 top 5 MVP finishes. And yes I see on Baseball Reference that Hank’s most similar is Bregman, I’d contend they Bregmans accomplishments, which are current, dwarf those of Thompson
2094 is a long way away. Perhaps leave this chat behind for your grandchildren (great-grandchildren?) to ponder on June 7, 2094?
Why shouldn't he be?
Didn’t say he shouldn’t, but you don’t find it odd that a little known player from 70 years ago is featured in a modern day video game?
From what I can tell, no one would have enjoyed *ANYTHING* more than Buck O'Neil!
Hey Joe,
Will be curious what you think about the games in London but more so the experience of trying to be an MLB fan in London when games start at midnight or if you're lucky you might wake up in time to catch the last innings of a West Coast game. When I was there last summer, I found it really hard to keep up.
Having played a lot of Strat-o-matic with 1950s teams, I always remember that Hank Thompson has a “p” in his last name and Bobby Thomson doesn’t.
i've always been certain that one of the hardest things to do in all sports is to hit a round ball travelling w/unpredicatble movement & velocity 80-100mph with a cylindrical bat, and the 2nd hardest thing is to pitch said ball consistently well- even the greatest hitters have only managed to hit successfully 30-40% of their plate appearances; the really skillfull ones w/good reflexes & great vision (e.g Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, et al) can augment their 30% or so hit percentage w/good percentage of walks...
Brits SHOULD love baseball's sense of tradition, but many i've talked with (i visited 3 wks in '16 & lived there 3 months in '18) just say we bastardized cricket (as if- hitting a round ball w/flattened paddle/'bat' is MUCH easier!!!)
Surprised by the cricket reference. Growing up I kept hearing that the English likened the American game to their game called Rounders. Check it out in Wikipedia. The English game known now as Rounders was originally called Base Ball and includes the four bases as we know them and a run being awarded for any player who safely negotiates all four bases.
I remember reading in baseball history stuff as a kid that Baseball was like Rounders and loosely based on it.
I think most people talk about Cricket today because it is a famous sport still played in Britain and in many countries that used to be part of the British Empire when there was such a thing. There is a bat and a ball in Cricket, and the similarities taper out pretty quickly from there. While Rounders is a playground game that is more similar to kickball (I want it slow and bouncy) except there is a bat, so also early base ball, and no one today knows what it is.
Spot on!
maybe the ones i talked to didn't think i'd know of rounders; i never heard any reference to it- granted, i didn't have the discusssion w/very many and there may have been some ales involved...
Sounds reasonable. It is often thought of as a child's game. Apparently the English National Team (The Talent Team) is for women and girls only. Apparently a game played by people of all genders in Ireland, but not at a professional level.
Something like 20 years ago, USA Today did a special feature on The Most Difficult Things To Do In Sports. They looked at everything involved - skill, endurance, etc. - to settle on a Top Ten. On the list were stock car racing (you may be doing it sitting down, but those cockpits can get up to 120 degrees, and you're getting some SERIOUS g-forces in the turns) and the pole vault (you have to sprint while carrying a long pole, plant the end of the pole accurately, contort your body to go over a rod, and then land safely....).
Number one on the list? Hitting a major league fastball.
Agreed. Even with position players pitching and throwing 80 MPH fastballs at best, it's not like hitters bat .900. It could be argued hitters aren't giving 100% in those spots but also sure Freddie Freeman doesn't want to strike out against a 1B.
yeah... and against position players, oftentimes guys aren't used to seeing pitches at 60-80mph, they've been seeing 90+ smoke all game, so the timing is off, it almost becomes like slow pitch softball, where it looks so meaty, big and eminently bashable coming at you and you just flail away helplessly
In a rout of the Angels a few days ago they chose to have a position player pitch the bottom of the eighth. His first pitch was timed at 45 MPH. He got through the inning without giving up a run.
We had to send the Mets over as an example of Major League Baseball, eh?
they could have done much better lol-
but at least they didn't send the White Sox or A's...