Conference thebay::joyoflex

647.0. "The ins and outs of baseball" by ATLAST::MEDVID (Anger is an energy!) Mon Apr 03 1989 17:46

    While other professional and college sports have adopted new rules
    or changed old ones to accomodate for changing times, baseball has
    preserved its original regulations with very little change in its
    entire history.  Perhaps because the game is so simple to begin
    with:
    
			"THE INS AND OUTS OF BASEBALL"

		The Rules of Baseball Are Actually Quite Simple		

You have nine guys in and nine guys out to start the game.  The guys 
that are out are trying to get the guys in out so that they can come in.

The guys in are trying to go out and not make outs so that when they 
come in they don't have to go out.

So in a typical inning the team in will send one guy out and when he 
makes an out he comes in.  The second guy that's in goes out and if he 
makes an out he comes in and the team that's in goes out.  And the team 
that's out comes in.

So then the team that was in that's out tries to get the team that was 
out that's in out.

For purposes of clarification, if the team that was out first has scored 
the same amount of runs as the team that was in first, and each team 
has been in and out nine times, you have to go into extra innings.

Again, for clarification, that means that the team that was out first is 
back out and the team that was in first is back in.

--Now the game is not going to go to much further!

The 10th inning then will start in typical fashion as the team that's in 
will send the first guy out and when he makes an out he comes in.  The 
second guy that's in goes out and if he makes an out he comes in.  And 
then the third guy who is in goes out and if he makes an out, then he 
comes in and the team that's in goes out and the team that's out comes 
in.

So then the team that was in that's out tries to get the team that was 
out that's in out.

Now if the first two guys on the team that's in go in and make outs, the 
third guy who's in knows that if he goes in and he makes an out he'll 
have to come in and his team then will have to go out and the team 
that's out will have to come in...so he doesn't want to go in and make 
an out.

So the third guy goes in and hits the ball out and runs around all the 
bases and now, the team that's in goes out and carries him in.

And those are the "ins and outs" of baseball!!
    
    Printed without permission from the Houston Astros Spring Training
    Magazine.

    I've seen a similar piece somewhere (on a towel?) about Cricket. 
    Anyone got a copy to enter?
    
    Mat.
    *:o)
    

    Re: .0
    
    Which just goes to show that with the recent resurgence in baseball
    popularity, all that's in is not out.

And Wade Boggs had a bit too much of the ol' in and out. :^)

Pete

    Wade Boggs may have had too much of the ol' in and out, but Steve
    Garvey just had too much of the in.  He forgot about the out.
    
    	--dan'l
    

    
    I saw a greeting card once, that on the front said "Irish Sex Manual"
    
    Inside it said "In - Out (repeat as necessary)"
    
    ..klaas..
    
    

    On an early Bob Newhart album (I think it was "The Button-down Mind
    of...") Newhart does a sketch in which he is a games marketing person,
    talking on the phone to Abner Doubleday.  It's a hysterical view of
    baseball; from a modern marketing point of view, it would never work.
    
    Actually, the entire album is hysterical.  My father first played it
    for me when I was young, and it was years before I understood what
    "button-down" really meant.  Something about buttons on the brain,
    I thought.
    
    There's also George Carlin's piece about the differences between
    football (rough and tough), and baseball (nice and friendly).  It's
    much better spoken, but there are lines something like:
    
    In football, you wear a *helmet*.  In baseball, you wear a cap.
    In football, you *break through the line, run for the end zone, and
    make a touchdown*.  In baseball, you try to go home.
    
    The inflections are critical.
    
    	- Win
    

    More from George Carlin:
    
    In baseball you get extra innings, football you have SUDDEN DEATH.

    In football you have DOWNS, in baseball you have ups!

Football is played in a stadium.  Baseball is played in a field.