Things That Confused Me When I Started Watching Baseball

In this episode of Baseball for Girls, I’m talking about all the things that completely confused me when I first started watching baseball.

From trying to understand the count and why pitchers shake their heads before every pitch, to figuring out what “0-for-3” means and how it affects batting averages. Baseball felt wildly complicated when I first fell in love with it back in 2022! But now, I understand the game so much better, and you will too!

I talk about:

• How I accidentally became obsessed with baseball 
• Why the Orioles made me fall in love with the sport 
• The weird beauty of baseball’s slow pace and sudden chaos 
• Counts, walks, plate appearances, and pitcher strategy 
• What a PitchCom is and why pitchers nod before pitches 
• How I learned to keep score 
• And why I created Baseball for Girls in the first place

If you’ve ever tried to watch baseball and felt completely lost, this episode is for you! You are not “bad” at baseball. You’re just learning a sport that has a million tiny moving pieces and an entire language of its own. 

Welcome to the softest corner of sports media!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey babe! Welcome to Baseball for Girls, where baseball meets soft girl energy. I'm Shaughnessy, and here we do baseball with heart, humanity, and a little humor. So whether you're brand new to the game or deep in your baseball era, you're in the right place. So grab something cozy and settle in. And let's get into today's episode. Let's play ball.

SPEAKER_01 1:00

So just a little bit more background on me. I started watching baseball in 2022, which was the year that the Astros won the World Series. That's how I can remember. They played the Phillies that year. So it was a really big game because I was living in Pennsylvania at that time. So when I was in graduate school in Pennsylvania, I started watching baseball. Mostly because I had always been interested in baseball, but no one around me watches baseball. I don't have any friends that are super into baseball or anything, so I never had anyone to sit down and try to teach me. So I was just watching TV and I have Apple TV. And back in 2022, that was their first year that they started streaming games on Apple TV. Well, it used to be called Apple TV Plus. So I might say that a couple of times, but um, but now it's just Apple TV. But um they used to have well, they still do, they still stream games on Friday nights. They started doing their Friday night baseball. Um, so I started watching it on there, and they would um have announcers that really explained the game, honestly, as things were happening, and that was super helpful for me when I was really just learning how to watch the game. Now it feels a little bit annoying because they're like explaining everything all the time, and now I understand, so I don't really watch Apple TV games anymore. But when I was first watching, definitely a very valuable resource. Um, Apple TV as a subscription, I feel like is about ten dollars a month, or it probably has gone up by now, honestly. But it's not terribly expensive. But if you want to try to learn baseball through watching, I definitely recommend watching it on Apple TV Plus. I haven't watched it in a while because, like I said, it started to get really redundant and a little bit annoying. But if they still broadcast the same way, and I feel like they do have the same broadcasters on that, um, on that service, streaming service, so I think that will be really helpful. But I was watching games on Friday nights, Friday night baseball of Apple TV Plus, um, you know, Apple TV Plus at the time, whatever. And I was watching one game and they mentioned that there was another game going on. So on Apple TV, they only have two games on Friday nights. Um, but the announcer was talking about another game that wasn't on Apple TV, and then I realized that baseball comes on every single day, not just Fridays. And so then I started getting way more obsessed. And honestly, I feel like the universe just kind of aligned because my apartment, so I was in graduate school at the time, and my I was living in student housing, and my apartment complex decided to give us cable for free. Um, well, I guess not really for free, you know, it was like the rent went up a little bit more. Um, it was not an option. They forced us to start paying for cable, basically. And so then I was able to watch more games because I was living in Pennsylvania. There's four different um teams that are in network that are like not blacked out or whatever. That's like a whole other discussion, like blackouts in baseball. It's like a huge thing that's going on in baseball today, and like people trying to watch games. But if you want to watch a game through the MLB TV service that they have where you can watch games, they could be blacked out if they are games that are actually near you, so you can't actually watch the team you want to pay to watch. But anyway, that's a whole other thing. I wasn't I hadn't subscribed to any, you know, MLB service at that point, but I was able to watch Baltimore Orioles games, um, the Philadelphia Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Washington Nationals. So the DC Washington Nationals. And so I was able to watch all those games. I like kind of was rotating between all of them. Um, and I felt like the Nationals were not that great. The Pittsburgh Pirates were not that great at that time. Um, the Phillies would win like almost every single game, and so it really wasn't that interesting for me to watch. But then the Orioles. The Orioles were super fun to watch because you never knew if they were gonna win or lose. Um, they always kind of seemed to come back at the end of the game, so it always just made the game super entertaining, and so then that's why I started to fall in love with the Orioles, and I started going to games because I was living um near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. So I was only an hour and a half away from Baltimore, and that's why they always say like that part of Pennsylvania is central, even though it's not in the middle of Pennsylvania, but it's central to a lot of different places, like you can get to anywhere within like four hours. And so I started going to Baltimore Oriol games, so I would take that little commute on Sundays. I bought Sunday modified season tickets where I was able to go to games every single Sunday. Well, not every single, but every single Sunday that was at home, I was able to go to a game. So, like I mentioned, I didn't really have anyone to teach me. I basically learned everything by myself. I kind of just chose it to be like my little hobby. Um, and I would try to not Google things, just try to understand it as I was watching it, um, and just learning new things like as I was watching more games. And that ended up being super fun. Of course, sometimes I would Google things that really just didn't make any sense after trying to figure it out on my own. Um, I did try to join like this baseball Reddit thread, um, and the guys on there were just not very nice to me, obviously. They, you know, Reddit is not necessarily a nice place to be if you're a learning, if you're trying to learn something. Um, so then I just kind of gave up on that. But and that's also why I wanted to create baseball for girls because I want a like a safe space for people who just like watching the game or just want to learn more about the game, just ask questions and try to figure things out, and we can figure things out together. There's still a bunch of things that I feel like I don't know, like something will happen, and I'm just like, I have no idea what just happened because I don't really have someone to like ask right then in the middle of the game, but I still find watching the game super fun. So, like I mentioned, I didn't really have anyone to teach me. I would sometimes collect a bunch of questions, and one of my friends, her husband was really into baseball, and so sometimes, like, if we all got dinner and her husband was there, I would like corner him and like ask him like 12 questions that I just have like sitting on my phone trying to figure things out, and you know, guys typically enjoy talking about sports, and they all always enjoy like explaining, you know, mansplaining things or whatever. So he loved it, it was great, but obviously I didn't really see him that often. So I always just if I find someone that I think knows a lot about baseball, I usually have a question for them about something that recently happened that I was trying to figure out, and people like that. It's a nice way to have a conversation about baseball and really get to know um more about the game and learn something, learn something new. So if you've ever tried to really watch a game on your own and really felt like it was super confusing, you just like kind of gave up, um, this episode is definitely for you because today I'm gonna just walk through some of the most confusing things that now kind of seem pretty simple to me. But obviously, like I mentioned, I still get pretty confused every now and again. So the first thing that really kind of uh threw me off was like I mentioned, how many games are happening at once, and then how many games are in a season. So there's 162 games in a season. Um, and I never really tried to keep up with all of them. Um, like I mentioned, I did have four different teams that I could watch on a rotation for a little while. But because there's so many games, because they play every single day, like it really does give you space to leave and come back. Um, not any one game, at least throughout the season, is really that much more special. Like it baseball is a game of just accumulation, like you're trying to accumulate as many wins as you can throughout the season so that you can make it to the playoffs, but really focusing on beating teams within your division so that you can be the winner of your division. So it's um every single day you don't have to watch a game, and it really just fits in with the rhythm of your life. Like I would just put on baseball while I'm cooking dinner or like cleaning up around my house on a Saturday, um, and just like having it on in the background, and it really just makes the perfect background noise, and you can like tune in when something is happening and tune out when it kind of just a little bit slower. I used to love falling, well, I still do, but I started falling asleep watching two late night West Coast games. Like I mentioned, I live on the East Coast, and so the West Coast games come on at like 10 p.m., like right when I'm about to go to bed. I like put on a Mariner's game, and I also really liked watching Mariners games because their score bug is what it's called, like the little box at the bottom of the screen, or something's the top of the screen. I think the Chicago White Sox keep theirs at the top of the screen, if I'm not mistaken. Some teams have it at the top, but anyway, the little box that tells you the score on theirs, sometimes they'll like pop up like these random little baseball facts. Some of it sometimes it'll be just like a fact about the player, or sometimes it'll like randomly explain something about a play or whatever. So I always really liked watching Mariner Skin, and that's also how I fell in love with the Mariners. Also, I mean, come on, Julio Rodriguez, are you kidding me? He's a a phenomenon. Like, I love him. So I just love how baseball is always happening and you're never really behind, but that also makes it feel like even more of a hole or a missing piece in your life at the end of the season. Um, so that was just something that I had to learn over time, like how many games there were, and then how to fit baseball into my life. The next thing that kind of confused me is just the overall pace of the game. Sometimes it feels like the game is going really slowly, and then all of a sudden it's just like chaos. There's a lot of pauses in baseball, you know, there's mound visits and like the pitcher might be doing a pickoff attempt. There's just like a lot of like little things that are going on. Um, the batter might take a time out, or is just like playing with their um batting gloves or just like doing random stuff. Um, but then all of a sudden, like one pitch would can change everything, and like they'll hit a home run or they'll hit a single, uh, or there are some batteries had walked, so there's like ducks on the pond, is what they would say. Like there's there's a guy on each base or something, and a base hit allows a runner to come in and score. There could be an error and the or a stolen base or anything could happen. And then all of a sudden, like everyone's yelling and screaming, and you're just like, wait, what just happened? Because baseball is a really sneaky sport. It like really depends on the tension that it built that it builds. There's not like constant action, it's just constant pressure. And then once I understood that, that's how the game got more interesting for me. Because the quiet parts aren't just like these empty moments. That's the building of the momentum for the game. The other thing that really confused me was the count. Um, so when a batter is up at the plate, it starts off as zero and zero, right? But after the first pitch, the pitcher will either throw a strike or a ball, and then the count will change to like one, zero, or zero, one. So the first number is always balls, and then the second number is always strikes. So sometimes you'll hear the announcer say like a three and one or two and two, and that's what they're talking about. They're just talking about the balls and strikes. So basically a three-one count means that there's three balls and one strike, and the hitter is in a good spot in this kind of count because only one more ball and they'll be able to take first base, which is a walk. But a 0-2 count, so zero-two uh count means that there's zero balls and two strikes. This is a pitcher's count, and the pitcher is in control because with one more strike, then the batter is out. And then once you understand the count, every pitch feels different. You'll start to see the strategy of the game. Because even if a pitcher throws a ball, that doesn't necessarily mean he threw that on accident. He could be trying to manipulate the count. He could throw a ball on purpose because he thinks that this batter is going to swing through it, and then maybe he doesn't swing, but he believes that this batter is maybe a little bit antsy and he doesn't even have to try to throw a strike. He knows if he throws the ball, this guy's just gonna swing right through it anyway. So it's like you you learn how different pitchers like to approach each batter, which is super interesting, and it just makes the game like so much more fun to watch. I'm definitely a pitchers girl. I love pitchers and like trying to understand pitch sequencing and stuff like that. It's super interesting. But it definitely was super confusing at first. And while we're on pitchers, the next thing that's super uh that was kind of confusing to me was like, why does the pitcher always kind of nod or shake his head before giving a pitch? Like for a while, I was just always like at first, I was only watching, you know, a couple of games, and I thought that maybe this just one particular pitcher just I don't know, he just needed to shake or something before throwing a pitch. But then I realized like all the pitchers were doing that, and I forget how I figured it out, but basically when a pitcher is like nodding, he's trying to say yes to the catcher because the catcher and the pitcher are in constant communication. You wouldn't know it because they're so far away from each other, but now the pitcher and and the catcher have this device called the pitchcom, so a pitch communicator or communications or something. I just know it's pitchcom. I don't know if it's communicator, communication, something like that. Um, and basically the catcher has like these little buttons on his arm and he like presses a button and it like makes a noise in his in the pitcher's ear. I actually don't know. I think every team has it set up slightly different. Like maybe some of them have words, but I think some of them are just like beeps or I I don't know, but they're communicating via that. And so you'll see the pitcher like nod his head saying, Yes, like I agree with that pitch. Before pitch comms, like the the catcher would just be like showing like little hand symbols or like hand signs to tell the pitcher which pitch he thinks he should throw. Um, because uh most of the time the catcher is the one who's calling the pitchers, telling the pitcher which pitch to throw. Every now and then you'll have a pitcher who likes to call his own games. That's kind of how they phrase it, which basically means the pitcher is the one that's telling the catcher what he's about to throw. So it took me a while to figure that out where I was just like, why do they keep doing that? But yeah, so they're trying to communicate with their catcher. And then I was also wondering, like, why does a pitcher get taken out of the game and how do they even decide when to take them out? It always felt so random to me. But then I realized usually a pitcher is being taken out of the game because he's not pitching very well. That's definitely a reason to take him out. But the pitcher could also be doing pretty well. Um, but the manager will take him out because of his pitch count, maybe, or they're worried about the pitcher getting fatigued or getting injured. Maybe the next batter up. They don't think that this pitcher is a good matchup for him, and a different pitcher would be a better option, or maybe he's just been in the game for too long and they need to take him out anyway. So it really is a strategy thing whether or not they take out a pitcher in a game. But I think I've mentioned it a little bit before. There's starting pitchers, relief pitchers, and then a closing pitcher. So your starting pitcher is obviously the one that starts the game. You want him to go into the game as long as possible. Right now, um, typically your starting pitcher is staying in the game between five to seven innings. Five innings get you uh qualified for a win and a quality start, while going deeper into the game is even better and helps you with your candidacy to be a Cy Young award winner. The more innings you pitch, the better you'll be statistically. That's also why I really love baseball, is because there's so much math. Even though I'm not really a math girly, I do appreciate the art of math and just realizing all the different statistics and like the trajectories of hitting the pitch and blah blah blah blah blah. Like all those things are super interesting to me. Like, there's so much math, and so they're looking at maybe the pitcher's numbers and they're like, yeah, no, we want to take this guy out. But statistically, uh the pitcher is better off pitching more innings in case they have like a really high ERA or earned run average. So they've had a lot of batters that scored while they were pitching, so that's obviously not good. The main job of the pitcher is to get the batter out. So, anyway, sometimes they'll just take him out because they know that the next pitcher needs to come up anyway. This guy's been in for six innings, and we should just switch to our relief pitcher. And so the relief pitchers are in what's called the bullpen, and they're just like sitting in the very back, they're just like chilling back there until they get a call saying that somebody needs to like start warming up because it's gonna be their turn. It's kind of funny. So those pitchers are relief pitchers, and then you have your closing pitcher, which is also technically a relief pitcher, um, because they will come in after a relief pitcher has been in. And they usually just pitch like the ninth inning or maybe like the last out of the eighth inning. They don't usually get more than five outs, usually. Typically, your closer is a three-out guy just to close the game out and make sure that you secure the win. And so understanding how that was being decided and like why a manager would take a picture out of the game also made it a lot more fun to watch because if like a pitcher's not doing very well, you're like, okay, where's the manager? Can you uh can you take this guy out, please? He's not having a great day. Um, or if it's you know, your opposing team and you see the manager coming out and you're like, yeah, it's about time you you need to take this guy out because uh we're about to win this game if you don't. But sometimes they'll just go up, like a manager will just go up and have a mound visit, and nobody really knows what they talk about at mound visits, even like when they're being interviewed by like a talk show person, and the talk show person's like, Oh, like what did you tell him at the mound? They'll be like really like dodgy about the question. Like, I I mean, there's probably someone who's said it, like actually what they might have said. They kind of just give like a vague answer. Um, but those mound visits are usually trying to like help help encourage the pitcher or like let him know, like you're about to be taken out anyway, and just try to get this guy out, you know, like we're waiting for someone else to warm up. You know, they're just having like a quick conversation or like trying to go over okay, this is how you should attack this next batter. He's been doing really well, so you want to do XYZ. Like, they're just trying to gum up and give them some quick pointers. Another thing that really confused me, um, were At bats. So a patter can come up to the plate multiple times, and not every plate appearance counts as an at-bat. I'm gonna have an episode soon where I explain a lot of the vocabulary with baseball. I recorded an episode, but I don't really like it. So I'm having to like redo it, but you will be getting an episode soon where I explain the count. For plate appearances, basically a plate appearance is every time a hitter comes up comes up to bat, like no matter what happens, like that is a plate appearance. But an at-bat only counts if certain things happen. So if the batter gets a hit, a strikeout, a ground out, or a fly out. But if a hitter comes up and he walks or he's hit by a pitch or he does the sacrifice fly, that does not count as an at-bat an at-bat. So sometimes during the game, like it'll be the second time through the order, which just means the second time they're going through all nine of so there's nine positions. So every single person's gonna go up who have a plate appearance. And so once they get through the order once, so they go through the first nine, then they go through the nine again, whatever. So a player will go up to have a plate appearance, usually at least three times within a game. So a player will come up for like their second or third plate appearance, and the announcer will say something like, Oh, he's oh for three today or something. And I was just like, What does that even mean? Um, but basically that just means that out of the three times or chances that he had at his plate appearances, he did not have a hit, he struck out, grounded out, or fly out. So, for example, if the announcer says something like he's one for two, um, but he came to the plate four times. Um, so being one for two means maybe he had a single at his first at bat, maybe the next two times he walked, and then the third at or the fourth at-bat, he struck out. So that would make him one for two. So out of the four times he came to the plate, only two of them counted because he had a single on the strikeout. Walks do not count as an at bat. Um, yeah, they just make it kind of confusing um because of statistics. So the plate appearances don't go towards their statistics for their batting average. The batting average is really just the at-bats. So that does make a difference as well. I won't get too into the weeds about how they calculate batting averages in this episode, but that all those like kind of different statistical things was kind of confusing to me. And then trying to understand why they're keeping track of plate appearances versus an at bat, and like why does it even matter? Like, why can't you just say he's two for four? Like, no, he is only one for two because some of those plate appearances didn't count, like they make it so complicated, and I I honestly love that about baseball. It's like the most randomly complicated sport, and it's just so intricate, and I love that. And then just a last one like, how do people keep score? Like, I realized that for baseball, people like to keep score. Um, I have a couple of score books that I've gotten over the years. Um, I love keeping score for a game. I try to do it at least a couple of times a season because it's just so fun. Um, and it really keeps you in the game. It honestly makes the good game go by too fast for me because I guess I'm paying attention too much. Um, so I don't really do it every single time. But one of my favorite memories of a baseball game that I went to, I went to an Orioles, well, a Mariners versus Orioles game. So at the Orioles Stadium, and it ended up being like a three and a half hour rain delay. So like everybody pretty much left. I stayed, even though I had a pretty far drive to get back home. That game was supposed to start at 4 p.m. So then it just started at 7, which is like not really terrible. A lot of the times the game start at 7 anyway. So then I was able to keep score in my brand new scorecard that I had gotten for my birthday. Um, and it was just such a nice, relaxing thing. Honestly, I don't remember who won that game, but I do remember Julio Rodriguez had a home run, and it was just so fun, and I loved it so much. And I could just like kick kick my heels up because no one else was sitting in my section anymore, everyone had gone home. Ugh, it was such a nice game. Uh baseball is just so good because even though we do want more people to get involved in the sport, sure, but a lot of the times there's not anybody there. You can really just like sit wherever you want, you can like relax and just have a nice time and watch the game and enjoy the atmosphere. And so I figured out how to keep score just using my scorebook. So the scorebook that I bought just tells you exactly how to do it. I think all scorebooks do. I've been thinking about creating my own scorebook and like making it in a way that makes it easier for me to keep score, and so keep an eye out for that whenever I finish making that. But if you just buy a random scorebook, it definitely tells you exactly how to use it. So I loved that. So, yeah, so those are the few things that really confused me when I first started watching baseball, and now honestly, like I pretty much said with all of them like all these things are now things that I love about the game. It just makes it so much more interesting to watch. Because every time you understand another thing, it just makes the game so much more fun, and really understanding it is the best way to really enjoy it. So, if baseball still confuses you, you're not bad at watching it, you're just at the beginning, and beginnings are always allowed to be messy. Baseball has so much patience, it requires so much patience out of you, and so learning about it takes patience as well. Um, and that is the best way to honor the game and get the most out of it. So happy watching. Thank you for hanging out with me in the softest corner of sports media, and I hope you come back for another episode. I'll be doing recaps throughout the season. And yeah, if you enjoyed this, please uh leave a review, um rate, share it with a friend that you think might also enjoy this and learn something from it. If there's anything that you found confusing about baseball when you're starting to watch it or as you're starting to watch it, let me know. Send me a DM, comment on some of my Instagram posts, you can send me fan mail on podcasts, and I'd love to address any questions that you might have, even if I have to look it up myself. Because it's a really a learning game. There's so much to learn about it. Um, and it takes such a long time to get the hang of it. But once you do, you're gonna fall in love with it just like I did. So, thanks for listening, and I'll see you guys later. Bye.