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Comment by koala_man | Hacker News Reader

Can someone explain this to a European?

I tried reading through it, but I spent more time on Wikipedia baseball pages than the actual article.

In baseball, there is a long tradition of deception and trick plays. Anything that agrees with the rules is fair to use against your opponents. You can hide the ball and pretend a different person has it, pretend there are three outs when there are only two outs, pretend that the ball has gone past you into the outfield when you've actually caught it, etc. Contrary to the article, it is even an accepted part of the game in youth baseball, because it isn't considered a negative gesture towards your opponents. (I played youth baseball, and I can tell you that there are people who get very angry about trick plays, but they are typically people who have not played the sport and don't realize that it's done in a spirit of cleverness and desire to win, not disrespect.)

What was extraordinary about the trick play in the story was that

1) it took advantage of a rule that even competitive players and coaches might not understand perfectly, especially in the heat of the moment, and

2) it flustered the other team so much that it caused intense distress, and they handled it just well enough that the distressing situation dragged on to the point of making everyone uncomfortable, even the team that executed the play.

Of course everyone who was there that day had to live it in a real time, and you can't complain about how they reacted, but with a little bit of distance, I don't think the batting team did anything wrong. I don't approve of personally disrespectful behavior, but baseball has a long tradition of this kind of trickery being completely orthogonal to the question of respecting your opponents. Winning on a trick play is no less respectful than winning by hitting a triple or striking someone out. Both teams are constantly challenging each other in ways they hope the other team can't handle, and one team gets beat and goes home losers.

in extreme brief, an offense player is expected to stay on a straight line between the bases, and if they go too far off the line (i.e. to dodge someone trying to tag them with the ball) they're out. the loophole in the rules is that this only applies while someone is trying to tag the runner, so if the defense isn't trying to tag the runner, the runner can go wherever they want.

this is extremely weird and confusing to everyone, as described in the article.

Thank you. The article makes more sense now.

> the loophole in the rules is that this only applies while someone is trying to tag the runner, so if the defense isn't trying to tag the runner, the runner can go wherever they want.

Runners typically leave the basepath when they are running fast and would have to slow down for the basepath's near-90 degree turns.

That is funny, I was hoping someone from the rest-of-the-world would ask this.

It seems that this 'sport' (and other U.S. 'sports') is one of those uniquely American things like 'customary units', tea drinking and non-standard spellings where British-ness has to be eradicated. The whole point of the game is that the rest of the world (particularly British people) just don't get it. Life is too short to bother knowing the rules to these U.S. only 'sports', unless you are working with Americans there is no conversation value whatsoever in knowing all those stats that U.S. 'sports' fans obsess over.

Baseball is played around the world. This comment is slightly insulting and pointless.

This is an extremely ignorant and needlessly mean comment. Baseball is known as "America's pastime," however, it's not just an American sport; its also popular in Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, South Korea, and Japan. One MLB team is currently located outside the US and a second used to be. There are professional leagues in many countries outside of North America. A quarter of MLB players were born outside the 50 States [1] Not only that, it traces it's history back to a British game (Rounders).

Plus the British are more know for tea drinking than Americans.

For me, I absolutely love "trick plays," they are great and are part of what makes baseball fun to watch. Fake tags, fake throws, the hidden ball trick, outfielders "deking" that the lost the ball in the sun, or "deking" that they are going to catch a ball. Those are some of my favorite plays. I completely disagree when people call them Bush League plays, if that's your opinion you might as well call advancing on an errant throw, taking first on a dropped third strike, or scoring on a wild pitch Bush League as well.

[1] http://m.mlb.com/news/article/116591920/opening-day-rosters-...

Sometimes an automotive analogy helps. In theory you could say 'Nascar' or 'IndyCar' has an international following and you could cite how some drivers come from outside of the USA to participate. You could even go through the history books and find cars built outside the USA and raced around banked ovals. But no, the rest of the world has F1, the WRC and plenty of other motorsports governed by the FIA and participated in internationally. For the rest of the world there is zero interest in knowing the ins and outs of whatever goes on in U.S. motorsport, it is a waste of time bothering to know.

Regarding tea, Americans don't drink it, not like the British do, my point being that this is one of those anti-British things going back to something that happened in Boston, to do with not wanting to pay taxes to the King.

Given the downvotes I had to check if I had misread 'baseball' for 'basketball', but I hadn't. You are kidding yourself if you believe baseball has a big international following. I also don't believe anyone in America knows anything about Japanese baseball or whatever is going on in the Korean game in any greater depth than what a Manchester United fan knows about what is going on in women's football. The IOC don't think that baseball matters although I am sure it will feature in the Olympics if the host nation is one of the few countries you cite that do play the game.

I fail to understand what the average American's knowledge of Japanese baseball has anything to do with the popularity of baseball in Japan.

Don't bother, this poster is just trolling and moving the goal posts is one method to do so. You could bring up how spirited and competitive the World Baseball Classic was. How it featured teams from all over the world and was watched and understood by fans all over the world.

Or how there are multiple professional leagues on multiple continents. Each with their own followings and eccentricities.

You could also point out that baseball is in fact back in the Olympics. Precisely because it now has an international following.

But none of that matters. Because this poster is in a race to prove how they are more euro-centric than Americans are USA-centric.

Baseball game in Japan, FYI: https://youtu.be/qL87Tq4QKqI

It's not that hard. Baseball is just like cricket.

You bring a book to the game or match and while reading occasionally look up to pay attention when something actually happens.

> It seems that this 'sport' (and other U.S. 'sports') is one of those uniquely American things like 'customary units', tea drinking and non-standard spellings where British-ness has to be eradicated.

Ignoring the flamebait about spelling and baseball, I have to say I'm confused about the "tea-drinking" part. I've always thought of tea-drinking as much more of a British thing than American, as the overwhelming majority of Americans I've met (from living in the US my entire life) prefer coffee to tea.

You're totally right about it being silly that we don't use the metric system, though.

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