 Okay, welcome. What we are going to do here is learn how to play the sport of baseball. And when I say that, I mean we are going to start at the very beginning. I assume you are here because you want to learn how to play. But when I was in school, I always thought the first lesson should be to explain what we as students were going to get out of learning the topic, right? Why should we care? Baseball might not have the same effect as learning something like physics, but I cannot express the enjoyment I have gotten in my life from sports, which never would have happened if I didn't know the rules. So I want to explain the rules to you and hopefully you find some of that enjoyment too. Also, baseball is the best game ever, so why not learn it? But I digress. In this video, can you tell it's my favorite sport too? So in this video, we are going to focus on the baseball field. We won't get into gameplay or even where the players stand until later. Let's just get to know the field and figure out what everything is called and where it is. So here is our field. Usually, its surface is a combination of grass and dirt, hence the green and the brown. You might see all dirt fields or even all astroturf fields, but all fields will have the same basic layout. Everything starts at the bottom here with this white pentagon, which is made of rubber and called home plate. Next, we notice that there are three white squares in the dirt, which are called bases. Because things work counterclockwise in baseball, we start on the right with first base, move to the top to second base, and then finally third base is on the left. Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but the way that a point is scored in baseball is when a player moves from home plate, touches first, second, then third, and then comes back home to touch home plate. But plenty of time for that later. The distance from base to base is 90 feet. So from home plate to first base is 90 feet. This creates a square, but because it is sideways, we call it a diamond, which is where the term baseball diamond comes from. And this is, they say, why girls like baseball because it is the only sport played on a diamond. Get it? Diamond? Just kidding. I'm still single. What makes home plate so special though is that it forms a 90 degree angle that shoots out what are called the foul lines. And there are two foul lines, one on the first base side and the other on the third base side. And these lines will actually be either painted or chalked. It's chalked a word. You know what I mean? They put chalk down on the field for the foul lines. Why are these called foul lines? Well, they are a bit like the out of bounds lines any sport would have. Everything between the foul lines, most of the field is called fair territory, which is where the vast majority of the action will take place. Everything outside of the foul lines is called foul territory. There are a few times where balls will be hit into foul territory that won't matter, but usually when the ball goes into foul territory it'll be into the seats or something like that so it won't matter, but again we'll get to that later. The foul lines extend the whole way out to the outfield fence. But before we get to that, let's look at this circle in the middle of the field which is called the pitchers mound. And the reason it's called the mound is because literally it is a pile of dirt which is elevated 10 inches above the rest of the field. The player who stands on the mound, the pitcher, is one of the most important players in the game. And he will use what is called the pitchers rubber or just the rubber which is this white rectangle that will stick up about an inch out of the ground on top of the mound. And the pitcher will push off of the rubber which will help him throw the ball harder. The pitchers rubber is, if you do the calculation, remember, home plate to first base is 90 feet and so katoa, remember, well actually that wouldn't work but I can't tell you that the pitchers rubber is 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. And on that note I should just point out here, if it isn't obvious, everything here is not drawn to scale. But now that we know home plate, first, second and third bases, the foul lines and the pitchers mound and the rubber we call the area that all of these things are located in the infield which is the area in fair territory that includes all of the dirt and below. When we reach this dirt line, which if there is an artificial surface or artificial field this line will still be painted on there to show the difference between the infield and the grass above which is called the outfield. Being that it's so large we divide the outfield into three sections not with any physical markings on the field or anything like that but just by calling the general area on the third base side left field the area on the first base side right field and of course this is right and left as if you were standing on home plate and looking outward and so then the area in the middle becomes center field left field, right field, center field. Between these outfield areas we have left center field and right center field the area close to the infield is said to be shallow so for example this would be shallow right field and the opposite of that is deep so this would be deep left field. Again the area of the field isn't really marked off on any way or doesn't even really matter but if you hear an announcer say something make reference to shallow pop up or something like that in right field you know kind of the general area of where the ball is which takes us to the outfield fence and outfield fences are a really cool part of the baseball field because they are different in almost every field there is so if you go to a basketball game in Miami or Los Angeles other than the colors both courts will be exactly the same but baseball fields have some freedom to be unique in both the distance that the fence is from home plate and how tall the fence itself is this is something that would probably make more sense if you saw a photo so here is PNC Park in Pittsburgh and so we can recognize the infield and the outfield unlike our drawing the field here is to scale so we follow the first base foul line all the way out to the right field foul pole which is kind of hard to see here but there is a tall yellow pole that sits on the foul line and all fields will have these to help us tell whether a ball that is hit over the fence is fair or foul from home plate to the foul pole in right field is 320 feet but you will notice that the wall itself in right field is fairly tall and in fact it is 21 feet high because a famous player who played for the Pirates named Roberto Clemente wore number 21 so they made the fence 21 feet high in his memory because he was the right fielder but as we move around the field to right center we see that the wall not only goes out and again when I say out this is because all distances to the outfield fence are measured from home plate so in addition to going out it also drops down to only being 10 feet tall in straight away center field and that means that if you draw a line straight from home plate out through the pitchers rubber and keep going the fence is 399 feet from home plate and most fields will be about this far and I should note that everything we are looking at here is in a major league baseball stadium major leagues are the highest level of play of baseball in the world if you look at something like college or younger with younger players like the little league games their fields will be much smaller as do accommodate the players but everything we are looking at here is for the major leagues so as we continue around the fence we see that in left center field the fence suddenly goes way back to 410 feet but it also drops down to only being 6 feet tall and it remains at that height over to the left field foul line most parts will follow the same general pattern of the outfield fence being closer to home plate down the foul lines but a bit further away either in straight center or one of the gaps the gaps are right in left center field so here is another photo of Fenway Park in Boston which has the tallest fence in the major leagues it is 37 feet tall at the same time it is only 310 feet from home plate so it is closer but obviously you have to hit the ball pretty high to get it over as the tallest fence in the league this left field here in Boston has been nicknamed the green monster Fenway's fences are a bit like the opposite of PNC in that it is tallest in left field drops down in center field and then drops down again to its lowest in right field and like I said almost every stadium is different when it comes to the height and distance of its outfield fence from home plate which is cool because it gives each park its own type of personality a ball that is hit over the fence in Pittsburgh might bounce off the green monster which just adds to the uniqueness of every baseball game so let's continue our tour of the field back at the home plate area the first thing that we looked at was home plate itself which is 17 inches wide and it includes this 90 degree angle that creates the foul lines on either side of the plate are these rectangles which will also be outlined in chalk which are called the batter's box depending on whether you are left or right handed you will only stand on one side of the plate or the other and which side really isn't that important the point is while you are hitting you must remain inside that batter's box and behind the batter's box is the catcher's box which will rarely ever come into play so as you can see in this photo we have our batter here with his bat and the batter's box around him on the ground and behind him is this guy who is crouched down and wearing a mask he is called the catcher and the guy behind the catcher is the umpire who is kind of like baseball's version of the referee we'll look at all these positions in the next video but that should give you a good idea what the home plate area actually looks like the plate, the batter's box and the catcher's box on either side of the field there is a covered seating area where the players sit and this is called the dugout usually it's below the surface of the field so you have to take a few steps down and it is literally dug out of the ground in front of the dugout and the entire way around the field is not grass or dirt it's usually some sort of crushed red rock this is called the warning track and we'll see that players will be trying to catch balls that are hit high into the air and since they will be looking up the whole time they won't be able to tell how close they are to the fence the warning track is there so that they can feel underneath their feet that they are getting close to the wall and that they should probably slow down if they are running too fast if they don't want to smash into the fence or fall over it and we can also see here that there will be a circle in front of either dugout called the on-deck circle which is where the batter who is about to step up to go to home plate would stand to get ready for his at bat and so that's pretty much the baseball field quick recap most important few things home plate first second and third base counterclockwise order bases are 90 feet apart the rubber is on top of the pitcher's mound and is 60 feet 6 inches away from home plate everything in the dirt is called the infield the grass up top is the outfield between and including the first and third base foul lines is fair territory and outside of those lines is foul territory so thanks for watching and I'll see you next time