Week 4

Baseball is a sport known by most as Americas favorite past time. It sure does pass time as the average game is about three hours long. As someone that played baseball throughout the entirety of their grade school career, I know first-hand that those three hours can drag on longer than anyone wants to be outside in the summer. This is one thing about baseball that indirectly affects the game overall, but I’ll expand on that later. This game, like any game, uses many of the tools laid out by Macklin and Sharp in chapter 2. These tools include constraint, direct and indirect actions, goals, challenge, skill, decision-making, abstraction, theme, storytelling, and context of play. The first tool mentioned is constraint which is heavily present in the sport of baseball. An example of this would be the fact that players are limited to a certain type of bat in the MLB to help prevent somebody from gaining an unfair advantage. Constraint in baseball also comes in the form of the strike zone which can vary from player to player. This small zone dictates what is considered a hittable pitch and what is not causing the pitcher to strategically pick spots in the zone they believe would cause the batter to strike out. Another tool mentioned in our book was goals. The main goal of baseball for both teams is to score as many points as possible. Throughout the innings of the game the goal of the defense is to get three outs while the offense tries to bat against the pitcher to get players on base. There is quite a bit of skill required for baseball as it is a very fast paced game once there is action. This skill can come in such forms as pitching, batting, and just overall game sense. An experienced player would be able to have a slight bit of control over the ball when batting to be able to get the ball past certain defenders usually in the infield. This skill and others like it can make dramatic differences in real game situations. An example would be batting the ball towards the 3^rd baseline to safely advance a runner from first to second whilst also getting a runner on first. Decision making in baseball is one the most important tools required in my opinion. I say this because everything comes down to the decisions made by the players at various times. A second base man that has the ball hit at them with a player on first and third could either throw the ball to the short stop to potentially run up a double play, but this could allow the runner on third base to easily score. These situations arise consistently in the game of baseball and each decision could change the outcome of the game drastically for both sides. Overall, the game of baseball seems extremely simple, but is actually quite a complex and deep game that involves a ridiculous amount effort.