How Baseball Works

Thursday was Camp Day.

I was embedded in a section that had a camp sitting there. One of the teachers/counselors told the kids that rule number one was to not ask her about baseball, because she knows nothing about baseball. Being the gentleman that I am, I told the teacher/counselor and the kids that any baseball questions they may have can come to me. I feel that as “Metstradamus”, it’s my duty to make my knowledge available to the people.

I got asked one question:

“How does baseball work?”

It’s kinda like asking why the sky is blue. Baseball just works, right?

I told her that each team has 27 outs to score as many runs as they can, dividing by three outs per inning. And whoever has the most runs at the end of nine innings won the game. She thanked me and went back to looking at her phone. I hope she looked up every once in a while because the Mets put on a clinic of how baseball works on Thursday, and all series against the Phillies for that matter.

Max Scherzer made baseball work by pitching seven strong innings, only giving up one earned run on five hits and a walk in 101 pitches, only being victimized by a wild throw to third on a double steal and a sac fly in the first inningBut he got better as the game went along and kept the Phillies right.

Jeff McNeil got a run back on an RBI single in the third off former friend Taijuan Walker, and then after Starling Marte was hit by a pitch in the 4th, Mark Canha followed with his second home run of the series against the Phillies, and his second home run which gave the Mets the lead in the game for good as the score became 3-2. The Mets would add a sac fly later in the game, and Scherzer and the modified bullpen of Jeff Brigham, Brooks Raley, and Drew Smith took care of the rest. Brigham pitched a 1-2-3 8th, Raley struck out Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber (who is hitting .160 by the way, and by the way that’s not how baseball works), while giving up a single to Nick Castellanos in between. And Smith came in to throw one pitch to pinch hitter Drew Ellis to end the ballgame.

So that girl, along with the rest of her class at P.S. 95, got a first hand view of how baseball works. (Perhaps home plate umpire Tripp Gibson will figure out how baseball works one day.) Hopefully my explanation made it easier to follow. Next time, I’ll be teaching them the correct way to chant “Let’s Go Mets” with the monosyllabic final word, and how booing every offspring of Roger Clemens makes baseball work better.

Today’s Hate List

1. Roger Clemens
2. Kody Clemens
3. Tripp Gibson
4. Brian McNamee
5. Shane Victorino