Explaining Innings & Scoring in Baseball

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 is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged 90 feet apart at the corners of a diamond. Offensive players take turns hitting while the defensive players try to stop offense from scoring runs. This is accomplished 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 defines an inning, and nine innings makes up a professional game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins. Baseball is a sport of intricacies and stats. It is a sport where die-hard fans can find no limit to their knowledge of the game, because each game is truly unique; and each night one can see something that has never happened before. In this free video series, a sports journalist and devoted baseball fan explains the basics of how the game is played. From pitching and base stealing to scoring runs, our expert will also discuss offensive and defensive strategies.

Video Transcript

"First, I'm going to start off with the big picture. Big picture is probably much easier to explain. Let's just start with the simplest thing of all. Which team are you going to root for. You can come to the stadium and root for the visiting team, which more often than not, does sit in the first base dugout. First base dugout is where usually visitors, visitors sit during the game. You'll find a couple of different places, like Yankee Stadium, where the home team actually sits in the first base dugout. More often than not, your home team is going to be in the third base dugout, visiting team is going to be in the first base dugout. After that, the object of the game is, in a nine inning span, who scores the most runs. The visiting team is going to have their first ups, which means the first time that they're going to bat, they'll be at the top of the first inning. There are nine innings. There is a bottom and a top. Top inning is always for the visitor, bottom of the inning is for the home team. In any case, let's say it gets down to a ninth inning and the visiting team is ahead, the home team always has the last at bat. They always get a chance to go ahead in the bottom half of that ninth inning. Winning the game is truly that simple. Whoever scores the most runs wins. Let's say a game is tied at the end of nine innings, it does go into a tenth inning and both teams get a chance to have an at bat. It is not truly sudden death where it's first team scores that wins. Both teams get a shot and it will keep on going until the game is not tied at the end of the last inning. To score a run, it is fairly simple. It is a man who crosses home plate. You got your first base, you got second base, you got third base and you got home. When you get home you score a run but you have to do that before the third out is recorded, so most of the time your runs come with one or two outs. Simply it is, it's sacrificing your way around the base. Whether that's with a hit or a, any numerous things. A walk. There's many different things you can do to get around the bases but the object is to get as many runners as you can around the bases and touch home plate prior to three outs. That constitutes a run. The more of those you have the easier it is to win."