Baseball is the "yes, but. . ." sport.
I had the pleasure of meeting the nicest young couple from Raleigh at a UNC baseball game last week. They had both attended the University of St. Andrews, the oldest university in Scotland. She came back to Raleigh after graduation and soon decided she couldn’t live without him so she just went to Ireland and got him.
He didn't put up a fight.
I love Southern women.
They were an adorable couple, I’ll call them Dylan and Allison.
Dylan grew up in Northern Ireland. Allison is a North Carolinian. He told me his favorite sports growing up were rugby and Formula One racing.
(Formula One is very big all over Europe and now Texas, two places with absolutely nothing else in common.)
Dylan knew almost nothing about baseball and he wanted me to explain the game in detail as it progressed.
“Three strikes and the batter is out?” Dylan asked.
“Right.”
“How do they decide when the other team gets to bat?”
“Each team bats until they get three outs,” I explained.
“And they play for 9 innings?”
“Yes, but. . . if the home team is ahead after the top of the ninth inning, they only play 8 ½ innings. And if the game is tied, they keep playing complete innings until the winner is decided. In the Super Regionals last year, Kentucky and Kent State played 21 innings.”
A UNC player fouled off a pitch.
“So,” Dylan asked, “a foul ball counts as a strike?”
“Yes, but not if it’s the third strike. With two strikes you can foul off pitches for hours and not strike out.”
He nodded and smiled and you could see the information being filed away.
A Maryland player swung at strike three but the ball got past the catcher and rolled all the way to the wall. The hitter ran to first and made it before the catcher could throw him out.
“What just happened?” Dylan asked. “That was strike three. Why is the batter not out?”
“If the catcher doesn’t cleanly field the pitch after strike three with two outs, the batter can run to first unless the catcher throws him out.”
“So three strikes aren’t always a strikeout?”
“Yes, it’s a strikeout in the record book, but the batter can also reach base after striking out.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, but not if there is already a runner on first base, because previous base runners can’t advance on the play.”
“Why?”
“It’s complicated,” I tell him.
The answer is actually the same reasoning as the infield fly rule. Without the rule, the defense could intentionally drop a ball and force a double play. I imagined explaining the infield fly rule and quickly came to the conclusion that doing so might lose Dylan as a potential baseball fan forever.
Besides, he seemed happy with “it’s complicated”.
“You know, I feel like I can’t really be at a baseball game unless I get a hot dog and a beer.”
“Yes, but you can't buy beer here at the stadium.”
“You’re kidding, right? Europeans always think of Americans as sitting in the sun, watching a baseball game, eating a hot dog and drinking a beer. You can’t buy a beer?”
“Not here,” I tell him. “It’s an ACC rule. You can buy beer at Durham Bulls games, though. And my school is in the Southeastern Conference. In the SEC, if you show up at a football game and you aren’t already drunk, they won’t let you in.”
"Can the coaches substitute players?"
"Yes, but unlike other sports, once a player is substituted for, he can't come back into the game."
Dylan returned about 10 minutes later with a hot dog, looking very proud of himself even without a brew.
In the middle of the seventh inning, we stood up to sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Dylan was quite impressed.
“It doesn’t strike you as strange that the entire stadium would stand up and sing Take Me Out to the Ballgame at every game in the middle of the seventh inning?” I asked.
He looked into the distance with an expression of deep thought.
“I suppose,” he replied, “it’s because they really like baseball?”
“Yes, but. . . they’re already at a ballgame.”
