What are Baseball Coaches, Managers, & Umpires?

Series Summary

In baseball, a number of coaches assist in the effective functioning of a team. They are assistants to the manager, the person who determines the lineup and decides how to substitute players during the game. A baseball team is also assisted by two base coaches when they are batting, with these coaches stationed near first and third base to signal and direct the runners and batters. In addition, a team may have several other coaches who specialize in certain areas of the game. A pitching coach advises and trains pitchers, while a hitting coach works with players to improve their hitting technique and form. A number of other people affect the game of baseball in a significant way, including team owners, scouts, fans, and umpires. The umpire is the person charged with officiating the game and enforcing the rules.

In order to understand how to game of baseball works, you have to understand the responsibilities of everyone involved in the game, including the people who aren't on the field or the bench. In this free video series, our expert will introduce you to baseball coaches, managers, umpires, scouts, trainers, and fans, and tell you what their responsibilities are and how they affect the game. You'll learn about pitching coaches and hitting coaches, base coaches, the owner of a baseball team, as well as the different kinds of umpires on the field. Baseball is more than pitchers and catchers, and these videos will show you how much more!

Video Transcript

"BEN GRAHAM: And now we're going to take a look at the non-player characters. Now, these are the players who are important to the game of baseball but they're not actually on the field. These are your umpires of various kinds, your coaches, your front-office personnel, your training staff, those types of folks. The folks who are not the ones who are throwing, catching or hitting the ball or running the bases, but the guys who are nonetheless very important to the success of the game of baseball, especially organized baseball. It's very difficult to play a game of baseball if you don't have umpires, if you don't have a general manager putting your team together, if you don't have a coach creating a line-up card and you don't have your base coaches telling people to advance or to hold or calling your various signals. If you don't have trainers keeping you healthy, your season is not going to be very long. So all of these people, while they may not be seen on the field everyday or they may be behind a mask or they may not be a person you particularly like because you think they're blind, they're still very important to playing the game of baseball, and we're going to take a look at them in this segment."