How to Learn About Baseball as a Fan

Video Transcript

"There are tons of people out there that can help you understand it, but you've got to make that commitment. I know for myself, I played for sixteen years. I played for actually seventeen years. And yet, I still took two classes in college that taught me even more about the game, the intricacies behind the intricacies. And that was because I absolutely adore baseball. But you know what? Not everybody is exactly as nuts as I am. So, it's important to remember that you can find, you can come up to somebody like me, watch a game with somebody like me who may be able to point out some things that are happening in the game that you may never notice. Why a guy in right field is shifting over ten feet to the left when a right-handed hitter comes up. Why do they do that? Well, it's because of actually physics. More often than not, people pull the ball. But it's important that you spend some time really learning those things and why things on the field are so important. The littlest of movement can mean the biggest of results. And to truly understand it you've got to sit down with somebody who understands it. Read books. Listen to broadcasters. A lot of times broadcasters are former players and players can really teach you about what's going down on the field. Sometimes they are so annoying that you just want to just put it on mute. But until you understand the game enough I suggest you actually listen to them because you can find a lot of things about, does a catcher really play with a batter's mind when he's in the batter's box? They do. They talk a lot of stuff when the batter is up there. But you know what? You'll get that by listening to people. It's very important to open up your ears, close your mouth and really learn about it. And there are ton of websites out there that you can just...blogs. I have a personal blog at orlandosentinel.com. There are tons of blogs on espn.com. There are blogs all over the place. And a lot of those, you can learn a lot from, whether it's insider information or a lot of times I like to write about what makes a great short stop. And that's where you can really learn the intricacies of the game is through different avenues. It's not going to all come from one person because baseball is a game of a million different voices. And eventually you want to be one of those voices that can speak with authority and so it's important to learn from others that have already learned before you. And then in return, teach them something that they may never have seen. Another avenue to learn from are newspapers. They've been around longer than baseball has. And it's very important that there is a lot of institutional knowledge, especially with columnists who will show up at games quite often and write something that's unique after a game. Many times you're going to know the score that night. They're going to go inside the locker room and ask the tough questions. Or they're going to have some kind of opinion that's really going to shed a light on something you may not have seen in the game. With a game that usually lasts between three and three and a half hours, it's very important to remember that you're not going to see everything. And so it's very important that you go out and you experience what other people are saying about the same thing. You may have seen something in the third inning, he may have seen something in the sixth and somehow they play off of each other. That's what's great about baseball. And so reading newspapers, reading magazines...Sports Illustrated is fantastic for baseball. You just get such good insider information. Sporting News is probably the best publication out there that allows you to get inside the statistics, which is a really big part of this game is the statistical knowledge that you have to have. What pitcher matches up against what batter, what batter...is this left-handed hitter better against this left-handed pitcher. There's all this insider information and these publications really allow you to understand that. So it's important that you pick up as much knowledge as you can. Pick it all up. Read it all. You're going to get different opinions but the fact is it all formulates what you're going to become."