{"id":4293,"date":"2015-08-31T09:43:31","date_gmt":"2015-08-31T15:43:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/?p=4293"},"modified":"2015-08-31T09:43:31","modified_gmt":"2015-08-31T15:43:31","slug":"take-me-out-to-the-ball-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/?p=4293","title":{"rendered":"Take me out to the ball game!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In today\u2019s\u00a0tutorial, we will cover everything I know about baseball (and softball) based on my personal observations. These personal observations are the direct result of watching tedious HOURS of the sport(s) interspersed by watching ADDITIONAL tedious hours of the sport(s).<\/p>\n<p>But the one thing I DO love about baseball\/softball? Is the simplicity of the terms used. Anyone can figure them out! [Side note: Plate and base are used interchangeably to describe a weirdly shaped, constantly dusty\u00a0thing where a lot of action happens. The originating plate or base which\u00a0births\u00a0of all the action is called \u201cHome.\u201d Carry on.]<\/p>\n<p>The person who\u2019s throwing the ball over home plate? Pitch.<\/p>\n<p>The person catching the ball that\u2019s being thrown over home plate? Catch.<\/p>\n<p>The person standing behind home plate who happens to be wearing a blue shirt over top of a flak jacket and who\u2019s being all judge-y about what Pitch is doing? Blue.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s even a person who sits on the sidelines and does math problems in a spiral-bound book. The book has pictures of a baseball diamond in it, and prescribed lines. There\u2019s a lot of intent, heads-down writing this person does in the book which makes the role seem like the worst role in the world.\u00a0\u00a0Like, why would you make baseball even more unbearable by doing math problems during it?! Nonetheless, there\u2019s always at least one person on each side who\u2019s doing the math problems in the book. Imagine that! These people we call &#8216;Book.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>See? It\u2019s not complicated at all. And I can even use\u00a0terms like &#8216;Blue&#8217; and &#8216;Book&#8217; in a sentence:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When the Coach isn\u2019t sure what day it is, he\u2019ll say to the judge-y fella: \u201c<strong>Blue<\/strong>, what\u2019s the count?\u201d Whereupon Blue will hold both his left and right hands up by his ears and\u00a0flash some complicated gang signs.<\/li>\n<li>When Blue needs a refresher course on math, he\u2019ll sometimes say, \u201c<strong>Book,<\/strong> whatcha got?\u201d And Book will yell out the answers to his math problems, or a coupla numbers at least.\u00a0 Then all within hearing nod sagely.\u00a0 Afterwards\u00a0one Book takes a field trip to\u00a0visit\u00a0the other team&#8217;s Book\u00a0so they can\u00a0congratulate each other on\u00a0doing\u00a0good math.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Perhaps this is why I don\u2019t like baseball\/softball that much: there seems to be a lot of counting and\u00a0math involved.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The other thing I know about the sport(s)\u00a0I\u2019ve gotten from the one movie I\u2019ve seen about baseball,\u00a0\u201cBull Durham.\u201d Coincidentally, the way Ebby Nuke LaLoosh pitches in that movie is exactly the way Sonny pitches. (Minus the sexpot redhead, ya creep. Gaah. Why do you always have to be creepy about stuff?) Sonny will blaze three strikes down the line to get the first batter out asap. Then he\u2019ll send a pitch sailing 5 feet over Blue\u2019s head before thumping the next two batters on the back with a ball. Eventually he gets sent, crying at having hurt others, to the outfield. (And YES! Now would be a perfect time to mention that <em>Josie\u2019s on a vacation far away! Come around and talk it over. So many things that I want to say\u2026<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>And that? Was a slight twist on the \u201c80\u2019s song for every moment in life\u201d game we play. Those were lyrics from a song called \u201cYour Love\u201d released in 1985 on the debut studio album <em>Play Deep<\/em> by a group called\u2026what else\u2026THE OUTFIELD. Boo-yah! Variations on a theme.<\/p>\n<p>Also? Everyone knows there\u2019s no crying in baseball! So I lied. In addition to all the hours of real life baseball\/softball I\u2019ve watched, there are actually THREE movies I gotten my knowledge-of-the-sport(s) from: \u201cBull Durham,\u201d which I\u2019ve just mentioned; \u201cA League of Their Own,\u201d thus the \u2018no crying in baseball\u2019 quote; and \u201cStealing Home.\u201d Full disclosure on that last movie: I only watched it because it had Mark Harmon in it. I thought it was about a guy who had a falling out with his family but ended up coming back to make amends by slipping in the back door of his childhood house \u2013 in effect, stealing home. I had NO IDEA it was about baseball until years later when my college baseball playing boyfriend (now husband \u2013 Hi, Hubby! Isn\u2019t my witty, insightful blog on baseball FUN?!) explained how a person at third base can actually run home when it&#8217;s not really his turn and while everyone is looking the other way and in effect \u201csteal\u201d home plate, base for a score, point, whatever.<\/p>\n<p>Ok, enough of all the baseball talk. The thing I find most perplexing about all of this is that a country that coined such simple and innocent terms for its national pastime also came up with phrases like &#8216;Eminent Domain&#8217; and &#8216;Manifest Destiny.&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>So, there you have it: Everything I know about baseball (and softball)\u2026and also everything I know about America\u2019s land expansion in the mid-1800\u2019s.<\/p>\n<p>You\u2019re welcome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In today\u2019s\u00a0tutorial, we will cover everything I know about baseball (and softball) based on my personal observations. These personal observations are the direct result of watching tedious HOURS of the sport(s) interspersed by watching ADDITIONAL tedious hours of the sport(s). But the one thing I DO love about baseball\/softball? Is the simplicity of the terms [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4293"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4293"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4297,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4293\/revisions\/4297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newstayathomemom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}