Baseball Basics

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Today I'm going to explain the basics of Baseball. Baseball is a game played between two teams on a field called a diamond.  Picture in your mind a diamond shape and at each point of the diamond is a base.  At the bottom of the diamond the base is called home plate. 



Each round of play is called an inning.  During an inning each team will get a chance to bat and a chance to play in the field. 

The team batting has one player at a time come up to home plate and try to hit a ball thrown by the pitcher of the other team.  If he hits the ball, he now must run around the bases touching each one.  If he makes it all the way around and back to home plate, he scores one point for his team.  A point in baseball is called a run.

The other team that is playing in the field wants to stop the batter from running around all the bases and scoring a point.  They do this in a few ways.  First, the person throwing the ball for the batter, called the pitcher, tries to throw it really fast or in a way that is difficult to hit.  The pitcher must throw it in the strike zone.  This is the area between the batters arm pits and his knees and over home plate.  If the pitcher throws in the strike zone and the batter does not hit the ball, it is called a strike.  Get 3 strikes and you are out.  That player must now sit down and let another player bat.  When a team gets 3 outs, they must switch places with the other team.

If the player hits the ball, he runs to the base on the right hand side of the diamond. This is called first base.  If he hits the ball really far, he can keep running to second base or third base.  And if he hits it really, really far, like over the fence then he can run and touch every base and go all the way around to home plate and score a run.  This is called a home run.

The team playing in the field wants to stop the batter from scoring a run by getting the player out.  As I said before they can get a player out in different ways.  If the batter hits the ball and a player in the field catches the ball before it hits the ground, then the batter is out.  Another way to get a player out is to touch the base with the baseball before the batter gets there or touch the batter with the ball.  Three outs and the teams trade places. 

Ok, That's the basics.  A player hits the ball runs around the bases to score a run and the other team tries to get him out before he can reach homeplate. 

Thanks for listening.  This has been Cassie Brenn for fastfoodenglish.blogspot.com