How Baseball Innings Work

Series Summary

Baseball is a sport played with a bat and a ball. In baseball, there are two teams of nine players each, and the goal of is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged ninety feet apart at the corners of a diamond. Offensive players take turns hitting while the defense tries to stop them from scoring runs by getting hitters out in a number of different ways. A player on offense can stop at any of the bases and try to score on a teammate's hit ball. The teams switch between offense and defense whenever the team on defense records three outs. One turn on offense for each team makes an inning, and nine innings make up a professional game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game is the winner.

Whether you're a beginner learning baseball, a fan interested in understanding the game, or a coach who needs to explain the rules to his team, this video series will help you to better understand the basics of baseball. By understanding balls and strikes, fair balls and foul balls, and substitutions, you'll be able to see how baseball works and how the rules affect the way the game is played. Our expert will teach you general rules like what defines a homerun, as well as specifics like explaining the infield fly rule. It's every American's duty to learn and understand the rules of baseball.

Video Transcript

"Now let's talk about the structure of the game of baseball. Baseball is unique among American sports in that it doesn't have a time limit. The game is instead divided into 9 innings. Each inning is divided into a half, a home half, and a visitor's half. The visitors will bat first while the home team is on the field. Once they've recorded 3 outs, then the home team will come into the dugout and come up to bat while the visiting team takes the field. You will hear this referred as the top and bottom of an inning. The top half is the visitor's half. The bottom belongs to the home team. The game of baseball can either be 9 full innings for a regulation game, or it can be 8 1/2 innings. If you get to the bottom of the 9th inning and the home team has a lead, there's no need for them to come back up to bat. Therefore, the game is over after the top half after 3 outs have been recorded. Sometimes you'll go into extra innings. If the score is tied after 9 innings, you can go 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 innings. As long as it takes for the game to be over until one team has bested the other team. The game will not end until both teams have had the opportunity to come up to bat in the 9 or extra innings. The home team always has the lost opportunity to score. That's a basic overview of the innings."