A Girls Guide to Baseball: How to Score

Posted by Stiletto Jen 343 views

image.art.com's image of Ken Griffey, Jr. Scoring his record 500th home run!

image.art.com's image of Ken Griffey, Jr. hitting his record 500th homerun!

In general baseball converation and game recaps you can make do with just knowing the “homeruns” and faking it from there. But not during the actual game! Especially watching it on t.v. Then there are terms like base hit, line drive, pop up, double, RBIs all flying around the room, or field as the case may be.

But I promise, it’s not so bad. Most of those weird terms are just different types of hits based on where the ball landed and how it got there. And they are important because not everyone scores from home runs, plenty of guys score the hard way by making their way around the bases.

So how do you score in baseball if you don’t hit a homerun?

Well, any guy will tell you that if you get to second or third base you are in prime scoring position and could actually make it to home base. And you are still scoring, does it really matter how you did it? (Yes, they will tell you this about actual baseball and not just about rounding the bases while making out).

Keep in mind that baseball is full of all sorts of other really complicated rules and “buts” Like, yes its a base hit, BUT only if there wasn’t an error by the outfielders on the second Tuesday of the full moon and blah, blah, blah. I’m not going into all that. Just giving you enough to understand what the heck the announcers are talking about.

You Swing. You Hit the Ball and it’s not Foul. Now What?

Chances are, your ball did one of these things:

Base Hit: A hit that gets the batter to at least first base.

Bunt: The batter doesn’t actually swing the ball and try to hit it, he kinda puts the bat in front of him and lets the ball hit the bat instead. This results in a short tap that makes the catcher and pitcher scramble forward to retrive the ball. Usually used to help move players around the bases (advance the runner).

Double: A hit that gets the batter to second base.

Fly-Ball: Batter hits the ball hard enough to catch air and it’s usually a high-flyer into the outfield.

Ground Ball (grounder): Ball rolls or bounces along the ground in the infield.

Line Drive: Flies in the air, but not at the height and angle of fly-ball. It’s almost like a missle the way it rockets through the infield and outfield. They are very hard to catch because of their speed, and because they are lower to the ground then a fly-ball, they drop quicker. Often they are hit directly at an outfielder and are caught on pure instinct–which registers on their faces! They look surprised to see the ball in their glove! How’d you get here?

Pop-Up: Goes very high but not very far and gives the appearance of dropping straight down almost slowly giving the fielder plenty of time to catch it. ***

Sacrifice: There are two kinds of these but the point is the same. The batter takes one for the team, so to speak. His action results in him being tagged out, but helps his team in the long run because it either advances the runners already on base (Sacrifice Bunt) or can actually drive in a scoring run (Sacrifice Fly). There are a lot of really small details about this but just know that makes the batter, well, a great team player.

Triple: A hit that gets the batter to third base.

***A bonus if you want to totally wow everyone is to know the Infield Fly Rule. It is one of those crazy little details that every once in a while it happens in a game. And guys can rarely remember the actual rule unless they played the sport themselves because it is obscure. They know the gist of it but if you throw this out there, well, you can pretty much get anything you want. So here ya go:

If there are runners on base and the batter hits a high pop-up in the infield that is so obviously catch-able that even I could catch it..while wearing stilletos… the ump will automatically declare the batter is out without waiting for the play to finish. This prevents the fielder from dropping the ball on purpose to tag out the baserunners and then throwing to tag out the batter.

Scoring Terms:

RBI: Runs Batted In. How many times the batter helped his teammates score while at bat.

Earned Run: Earned by a walk, stealing or from a hit.

Homerun: When the batter hits the ball out of the playing field, but in fair territory.

Grand Slam: The batter hits a homerun when the bases are loaded. Scores 4 runs!

About the author: Jennifer Taglione is the owner of this fabulous website Stiletto Sports. Despite writing well over 500 posts, she still maintains that she is not a sports writer! She is however a huge fan of Kurt Warner, Larry Fitzgerald, Mark Sanchez, the Celtics, and totally kicks butt on March Madness brackets! Connect with her by following her on Twitter @StilettoSportsJ and subscribing to her weekly newsletter. For more info check out the About the Editor page!

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