Baseball Rules for Beginners | Easy Explanation

Hello friends, welcome to the school of sports. In this video, I'm going to tell you the rules of baseball. Baseball is played with a bat, ball and a glove. Now the bat is circular in shape, so it's hard to hit the ball where you really want to hit it. Baseball is played in massive stadiums and you would see four blocks on the baseball field. They are called bays and because it's played with a ball, the game is called baseball. Baseball is played between two teams. One team would be batting at a time and the other team would be fielding at a time and after an inning, they would switch their roles. So the batting team would field and the fielding team would bat. Baseball is played in a 90-degree area, so only this area would be used for playing. If the ball goes into any other area, it's not really useful. Now the basic purpose of baseball is and then batsman goes to 1st base, 2nd base, 3rd base and back to the home. That is one run. The team that scores more runs wins the match. Let's take a look at the top view. This is how it looks like from the top. This is a field. This is how it looks like from top. Let's cover some terminology. This is a pitching mound. This is a home plate and then 1st base, 2nd base, 3rd base. So there are four bases and then this is center field, left field, right field and foul line. So foul line determines the playing area. If the ball is between the foul line, it's good. Otherwise, it's not good. And then there are places for coaches and if we look at the pitching mound and the home plate from this area, this is how it's going to look like. You have a pitcher and the batter and the catcher and the umpire. Pitcher's objective is to throw the ball to the catcher and batter need to hit it. Pitcher can throw ball from 70 to 95 miles per hour and the distance is short so the ball can come in just half a second. Hitter need to make his judgment to hit the ball within half second. That's fast. Mostly you would see television angle which would have a camera behind the pitcher. So this is what you're gonna see when you look at the TV. Here's the batsman. This guy's a pitcher and he's a catcher and here's an umpire and you see this white box. This is called a strike zone. So what is this strike zone? Basically, the objective of pitcher is to throw the ball into the strike zone. Strike zone is between the waist and the knee. That's the height and the width is equal to the base plate. Width the same for all players but the height depends upon the height of the player. Taller players have a bigger strike zone. Let's talk about strike. What is strike in baseball? When pitcher throws a ball in the strike zone and the batter didn't swing his bat, that is a strike. Even if ball is on the boundary, that is strike. If pitcher throws three strikes, then the player is strike out. The player would go out and then the next player would come in. Another thing is ball. What is ball? If a pitcher throws a ball outside the strike zone and batter didn't swing his bat, then that is a ball. If pitcher throws four balls, then a walk to first base. So the batsman would go to the first base and as you see here, the second batsman would come and stand on the home plate. There's another way in which strike can happen. If a batsman has swung his bat and then it doesn't matter whether ball is inside the strike zone or the ball is outside the strike zone. If he's not able to contact the ball and swing his bat, that is a strike. This is where it gets very interesting. If the pitcher knows that the batsman is going to swing, then he's to throw a crazy ball and there's no way the hitter is going to hit it and that would be a strike. That's what the pitcher needs. Another thing is hit by pitch. If a pitcher throws the ball and it hits the batsman, then it's a hit by pitch and then pitcher gets to walk so he would move to the first base and the next player would come in. Let's talk about foul. If a pitcher throws the ball, it hits the bat and then it goes into the non-playing area that's called foul. You see here the pitcher throws the ball and these are the foul lines. So area within the foul line is fine. If it goes outside, then it's a foul ball. So any of these shots, the ball would be a foul ball. So what is really foul ball? Is it a strike or a ball? It depends. It depends upon the situation. It depends upon the situation. If there's a zero strike and then there's a foul, then that is counted as strike. If there's one strike and it's a foul, then it is counted as strike. If you have two strikes and then you do foul, it doesn't really count. So if you have a zero or one strike, then the foul would be counted as a strike. If you have two strikes, then foul doesn't really mean anything. Let's look at a fair ball, the most fun part. So pitcher throws the ball, batsman hits it and it's in the playing field. Anywhere in the playing field is fine. Even if ball lands in the playing field and then goes out, that is also fine. Once player hits the ball, it's a fair ball. He must go to the first base. He doesn't have any choice. He needs to go to the first base. Let's take a quick look of what we learned so far. Ball is in the strike zone. Batter didn't swing his bat. That's strike. Three strikes is equal to out. Ball is outside the strike zone. Batter didn't swing his bat. That is a ball. Four ball is equal to one walk. Batter swing his bat but was not able to connect with the ball. Doesn't matter whether ball is inside the strike zone or outside. It is called a strike and three strike is one out. If a ball hits the batsman, that is called hit and in that case, the batsman get to walk to the first base. If the ball strikes the bat and it goes into the foul area, then it's called foul ball. If a player has zero or one strike, then the foul would count as strike. If a player has two strikes, then the foul would do nothing. If a player contact the ball and it goes into the fair area, it's called fair ball. In that case, the batsman must go to the first base. Let's talk about the ways in which a player can get out. So the first way is here the pitcher threw the ball. Batsman hit the ball. It's in the air and one of the fielders caught the ball. In this case, it's out. If ball went high and player catches somewhere here, it's called pop out but if ball goes like deep into the field and there's someone catches it, it's called as a fly out. Let's talk about put out. Pitcher threw the ball. Batsman hit the ball. Nobody caught it directly. Now, the hitter must run to the first base but before hitter runs to the first base, if a fielder can reach to the first base with the ball in his hand, then the player is put out. In this case, because fielder is close, he reached before the batsman so he's a put out. Let's talk about tag out. So pitcher threw the ball. Hitter hits the ball. Fielder is coming to get the ball and then runner is running. Now here, the fielder with the option. One, either he moved to the base. In that case, it's a put out or he can just touch the player who's running. So, if a fielder has a ball in his hand and he touches a player who's running, then it's a tag out. Consider this scenario. Pitcher threw the ball. Hitter hit the ball and then fielder got to the ball. Now, in this case, you might be wondering, you know, runner should be able to run to the first base. There's no way fielder can either touch him or he can reach to the first base. So, he should be fine, right? But think about it. What if this player can reach to the first base and another player can throw the ball. Now, the player is on the base, has a ball and if they can do it before the hitter reaches first base, then hitter would be out. So, that's what exactly going to happen here. He threw the ball before runner reaches there. So, he's out. In case runner is able to reach to the first base without getting out, then what would happen is player two would come here and he would bat. In that case, we would say first base is loaded and second player is batting. Let's talk about first base loaded and stolen base. If you remember, this is first base, this is second base, this is third base. So, here first base is loaded. Now, what can happen is when pitcher is throwing the ball, he can run and go to the second base. Look what happens. He went there and he's able to do it before catcher throws the ball back to the player. To prevent player one to move to the base second, they move the player to the first base. The reason they do it because now in this scenario, pitcher can throw ball directly to the first base and player one would be out. So, player one needs to reach out to the first base before pitcher throws the ball and the person on the first base catches the ball. Now, pitcher has a second option which is he needs to throw the ball to the batsman as well. He needs to make decision whether he needs to throw the pitch or he needs to throw ball to the base. So, depending upon how far this guy is, if he's somewhere here, definitely he's out. So, pitcher needs to be very aware of the surroundings. Let's take a look at the first base loaded and it's a fair play. So, first base loaded. You see a player over here and second player is batting. Ball is thrown. Ball is in the air and you would see player one is in middle of first and second base. Why isn't he middle of these two bases? Why he hasn't gone to base two is because if ball is caught, then he must return to his original position. If ball is dropped, then he can move to the next base. So, he's standing here and waiting whether ball will be caught or dropped. If it's caught, then he need to come to original position. If it's dropped, he can move on to the next bases anywhere. The situation would be different if player is standing on some other base. If player is standing on third base, what would happen is he's going to wait until ball is caught because now that ball is caught, he can move now. Before ball is caught, if he moves anywhere, he need to return to the base where he started. But now that ball is caught, he can run here and he knows there's no way this player can throw ball before he can reach. So, he's gonna run here and he's able to do it. Depending upon where you are, you need to make those adjustments. So, it's a very conscious sport. People need to be aware of what is happening. Let's talk about double play. What is double play? So, consider this scenario. There's a player on first base and the second player is batting. Pitcher threw the ball. Ball went to one of the fielders. Now here, if this player can go to base two and he can get the ball before player one reaches to the base, then player one is out. And then, if he can throw the ball to the first base before player two reaches, then he's also out. So, because you got two outs, it's called double play. Let's take a look at the home run, the most fun part of the baseball. If a ball is thrown and hitter hits it outside. Let's take a look in this stadium. If a ball is thrown and it's hit outside, then it's called a home run. Remember, you would see an outfield fence. The ball should go above the outfield fence to be able to make a home run. In home run, what happens is everyone would get enough time to run all the bases. Here you see there are four players and because everyone was able to reach to the home base, they would get four runs. If there were two players in the home run, they get two runs. If three, three, one, one. Home run happens less frequently but whenever it happens, it's a lot of fun. Everyone cheers up and it's really good to see this. Let's understand from high level. When a team is batting, they get three outs. If a team gets three outs, their inning is over and then other team would come to bat and they would need to field. So then team B comes and bats. So they also get three outs. These are called half innings. Combined, it's called one inning. So in one inning, they would have six outs. Another way of saying is in first inning, you have a top half and bottom half. In the top half, A team is batting and B is fielding and then they would do the bottom half where B would bat and A would field. This would comprise of one inning. In the second inning, they'll do the same thing again. In the first or the top half, A would bat and in the bottom half, A would ball. So they do this for nine innings and whoever has more score at the end wins the match. Here after one inning, the score is zero. After second inning, A scored one, B scored two. So the score is one and two. At the end of nine innings, they look at the score. So A has five points. A won the match. If it's a tie, then they keep on going one more inning, one more inning until they have a winner. It's a long game. It's for three hours and they throw on an average 300 pitches. It's a lot of fun to watch baseball. It's a long game. A lot of things can happen. Now let's take a look at the real match. So how are you going to read a score if you're watching match on the TV? This is what you're going to see on the right bottom or the left bottom. So let's take a deeper look into it. So what is happening here? What does it really show? Because it's the beginning of the match, the runs is 0-0. The triangle pointing upward is showing LAA is batting first. When the triangle is down, it's called bottom inning and then NYY would be batting. One shows first inning because match has just started. Zero shows the out. So because there is zero out, it's zero. They have three outs and then inning would change. The first number shows ball. So if one, two, three and a four ball, they get a walk. The second number shows strike. If three strike, then the player is out. These three square boxes show the first, second and third base. Right now, because match started, nobody is standing on the bases. In case if there's a player on first base, the first base is loaded. Then you would see something like this. Let's say you open up your TV and this is what you're seeing. How to figure out what is going in the match? So if you see the runs, LAA is having seven runs. So they are leading in the match. If you look at the triangle, it's bottom. So bottom inning means NYY is batting right now. LAA has completed their batting in the seventh inning. So seventh inning is going on. For NYY, they got two outs. So their last batsman is batting. If they get one more out, the inning would be over. The two shows, two balls has been delivered to that player and two strikes. So he needs to hit the ball. If he gets one more strike, this inning is over. On the bases, you see there's a first and second is yellowish, which means there's a player standing on first base and second base. Now, if the batter hits a home run, imagine the batter, the player on the first base and the player on the second base, they would get three runs. So the NYY would have seven runs. So it's a close game right now. LAA is leading, but it's a close game. So that's how you can make it out from the scoreboard, how the match is going. That's all from my side. I hope you liked it. Hit the like button, share it with your friends so that they can also learn. And if you want to learn about other sports, subscribe my channel. I keep posting videos about new sport so that people can learn and really enjoy the beauty of sport, the blessing to humanity. Thank you so much for your time.