Baseball Is Around The Corner

The recent warm weather in Michigan can only mean one thing: Spring is just about here, and that means that America's pasttime is too. Everyone eagerly files in through the turnstiles to watch their team play. The allure of baseball is that, it is appealing from the time you are barely old enough to form a complete sentence, to the time where you have forgotten more baseball than most know about. Baseball has so many reasons to be everyone's favorite sport, but I'm here to tell you my favorite things about the diamond.

One of the best things about baseball is the lingo. "That's a 6-4-3 double play", "Its the ninth inning, so they're going to bring in the closer", and Tigers announcer, Rod Allen, calls a fastball a "piece of cheese". There are numbers assigned to every player, for score-keeping purposes. The pitcher is 1, catcher is 2, first baseman is 3, second baseman is 4, third baseman is 5, shortstop is 6, left field is 7, center field is 8, and right field is 9, The 6-4-3 double play, describes the shortstop throwing it to the second baseman to get the runner at second out, and then throwing it over the first baseman to get the runner at first. The closer is a pitcher specialized in getting the last three outs of a ballgame. They usually don't have the stamina to throw 5-6 innings, but they are efficient in their craft and are master strategists.

Another reason I love baseball is the amount of stats and information on players. Baseball is by far the most tedious with statistics and analytics, so much so that they have people constantly coming up with new ways to analyze a player's performance. Let's start with the basics. For hitters you have batting average, on-base percentage, hits, home runs, runs and runs batted in. Batting average is the amount of hits divided by the amount of at-bats. On-base percentage is walks plus hits divided by at-bats. Hits are singles, doubles, triples and home-runs. Home-runs can be both balls that travel outside of the field of play, inside the two yellow foul poles, and balls that don't leave the field of play but the runner rounds all the bases and touches home on a single swing of the bat. Runs are counted when a player scores off of another players at-bat. Runs batted in, or RBI's are counted as when a player scores another player, or players on an at-bat. For pitchers, you have WHIP, ERA, strikeouts and wins. WHIP is walks plus hits divided by innings pitched. ERA is earned runs allowed. Strikeouts are when a pitcher gets a player to get three strikes, either by swinging and missing, or by not swinging at a called strike three. Wins are when a pitcher leaves the game with the lead after pitching 5 or more innings, and his team doesn't give up the lead in between the time he leaves until the end of the game. There are more advanced analytics such as SIERRA and xFIP, which try and really breakdown how a pitcher performs, independent of their team defense. Statistics have really grown with the ever-changing landscape of the sport. I play fantasy baseball and have for about 5 years. I really love the strategy of a fantasy draft and all of the work that goes into it. It's by far the longest of the four major fantasy drafts, with the big roster you have to fill, and it's always fun to "study" for your draft. You have to judge over 300 players and see if they are capable of performing at a high level, or thinking that they might regress.

My favorite reason I love baseball, is because it's a family-oriented sport. No other sport gets families out quite like a day at the ballpark. The crack of a wooden bat and rock hard ball colliding is one of the best sounds on earth. The aroma of hotdogs and beer from the vendors make you wish prices weren't so damn high. The taste and stickiness of cotton candy take you back to being a kid, when times were simpler everything was innocent. The roar of the crowd, the seventh inning stretch, everything brings you together and makes you all. feel like a big family. I think that's why baseball will never go out of style. The wholesomeness awakens the kid in all of us, taking us back to playing catch in the yard with our dads, playing baseball and imitating our favorite hitters and pitchers, and so much more. Baseball is back and I couldn't be more happy