How do I get into baseball? Are the rules hard to learn? I understand

watch games

>>76214057
play a boreball vidya game

There's not many rules, it's just strategy and variables.

i could also unironically use a retard-tier explanation if this is what i'm going to be watching every summer for the rest of my life

Balks and baserunning peculiarities (interference and obstruction) are the only things that are hard to learn, but they don't happen often enough to bother learning until they happen.

>>76214057
>>76214097

ask away, i know everything there is to know about babsel

Basic shit like 3 outs, 9 innings, single or double.

Intermediate shit like right v lefty, shift, or fastball v slider

Advanced shit like OPS, double switch or balks. Really not that hard

>>76214057


Just look up the basic rules and afterwards watch some games.

Rules are pretty simple. Unwritten rules are dumb as hell.

>>76214743
i guess the only thing i don't actually get is the pitching and the strategy behind it when i think about it. what a pitcher is trying to do when it seems like they're intentionally running the ball up to 4 then hitting 2-3 strikes in a row. stuff that you wouldn't pick up on if you didn't play the game growing up.

>>76214843

that all depends on the hitter and situation. sometimes a less skilled pitcher is trying to finesse his way into the hitter's head, sometimes the catcher and scouts have a gameplan in place to lull a slumping hitter into a swing and miss

I never realized how many rules there are in baseball until I actually tried to explain the game to a foreigner. That said, if you just watch a couple games you will get the important points, and then later you can work your way around to obscure things like, say, the infield fly rule.

As far as getting into it, check out some baseball related movies. Bad News Bears is my favorite.

>>76214843
if a pitcher is "up in the count" 0-2 or 1-2, he will rarely throw a pitch in the strike zone. trying to get the batter to chase a ball and either strike out or make poor contact and ground out

just watch a few games the whole way through. the announcers do a pretty good job of explaining shit

Catch the fuckin ball and have those big cocksuckers who can hit the ball out of the park and you won't make mistakes

>>76214843
There are lots of reasons to throw a ball on purpose.

The biggest is that even if the player makes contact the chance it will be in play with a chance at a hit is greatly lessened.