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The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win

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Re: The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win

#71
post #9
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who can drink a beer per inning is not doing it as a one time thing. If you drink infrequently, you won't be capable of doing this and remaining in a capacity becoming of public places with children around

To be fair, OP didn't say anything about being at the game. Could be at home. 9x 4% 12.5oz beers in 3 hours is quite a lot, but it's definitely something that could be accomplished without the person necessarily having a problem. I know plenty of people who are not alcoholics but have stories of one-off nights like that with friends. Definitely don't do this in a public, child-friendly venu though. That would be gros…

A lot of HNers are quite puritanical about alcohol and think it cannot ever be enjoyed responsibly, and that anyone who has ever overdone it a bit has a serious problem.

As you and others have said, this is maybe a bit much to have over 3 hours, but doesn't necessarily mean anything on its own. This is roughly six 500ml beers (plus one half), at a rate of one beer every 30 minutes. The bigger issue would be fetching the beer and going to the toilet - you'd be up and down constantly.

Re: The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win

#72
post #65
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there any guide for us non-americans to help us gain enough grasp on the rules to, at least, understand the dynamics of the game? If you've already read "no matter how many" and don't get it? Then no, you probably can't be helped. It's not very different conceptually from cricket. One player throws the ball hard, another tries to hit it far away with a bat. If you hit it far enough, you get to run; if you run fa…

I’ll never understand commenters who ask strangers to explain how some of the top sports in the world work from other random commenters rather than looking up a basic rules video or something like that. In the era of LLMs it’s even more confusing.

Because they want an explanation from this very specific crowd/culture?

Re: The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win

#74
post #28

No matter how many videos or articles I've read, I still can't wrap my head around the rules of baseball. Is there any guide for us non-americans to help us gain enough grasp on the rules to, at least, understand the dynamics of the game? Learning the basic of (american) football was much easier. I'm not writing any treaties any time soon, but at least I can follow the games and enjoy the "craftsmanship" of the playe…

The rules aren't important. What's important is, it's linear. Every time I throw this ball, a hundred different things can happen in a game. He might swing and miss, he might hit it. The point is, you never know. You try to anticipate, set a strategy for all the possibilities as best you can, but in the end it comes down to throwing one pitch after another and seeing what happens. With each new consequence, the game…

Still the best series opener by a country mile.

Re: The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win

#75
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rules aren't important. What's important is, it's linear. Every time I throw this ball, a hundred different things can happen in a game. He might swing and miss, he might hit it. The point is, you never know. You try to anticipate, set a strategy for all the possibilities as best you can, but in the end it comes down to throwing one pitch after another and seeing what happens. With each new consequence, the game…

There's a lot of truth here. As they say "In baseball, anything can happen, but often doesn't". Oh boy, is that true. Also, baseball is the most random of the major sports in the US. Consider the playoffs, statistically, any team getting into the playoffs has an equal chance of winning the World Series. It's just that dynamic. The other interesting consideration about baseball is that when the ball is out of control,…

There's also a lot of depth to the strategy of the game. Handedness, pitcher/batter tendencies, etc.

I'll never be convinced moving the NL to the DH was the right move for people who actually liked the sport.

Re: The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win

#76
post #31

No matter how many videos or articles I've read, I still can't wrap my head around the rules of baseball. Is there any guide for us non-americans to help us gain enough grasp on the rules to, at least, understand the dynamics of the game? Learning the basic of (american) football was much easier. I'm not writing any treaties any time soon, but at least I can follow the games and enjoy the "craftsmanship" of the playe…

American football is probably pretty straightforward at a very basic level. (And very complex as you dig deeper--coverages, penalties though even the refs seemingly don't understand them a lot of the time, man in motion rules. A lot it's simplified because at any serious level, players do their thing and don't violate most a the less straightforward points that much. I think rugby is pretty similar. As someone who re…

I'm a born American and I don't know the detailed rules to football. Baseball is conceptually easy though. Football seems super messed up with a clock that never seems to end and a game that is 90% commercial breaks.

Re: The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win

#78
post #31

No matter how many videos or articles I've read, I still can't wrap my head around the rules of baseball. Is there any guide for us non-americans to help us gain enough grasp on the rules to, at least, understand the dynamics of the game? Learning the basic of (american) football was much easier. I'm not writing any treaties any time soon, but at least I can follow the games and enjoy the "craftsmanship" of the playe…

American football is probably pretty straightforward at a very basic level. (And very complex as you dig deeper--coverages, penalties though even the refs seemingly don't understand them a lot of the time, man in motion rules. A lot it's simplified because at any serious level, players do their thing and don't violate most a the less straightforward points that much. I think rugby is pretty similar. As someone who re…

I think you have to differentiate between professional (or collegiate) level football v. less formal games.

Having grown up playing lots of American Football all through school (for fun, not competitively), I think the rules are a lot more of a spectrum. For someone to play for fun or even watch the pros, most of the rules don't really affect the overall understanding. There will be some plays that get reversed or penalized on some weird technicality, but it's relatively rare. Things like "offsides", "false start", "delay of game", "intentional grounding", and personal fouls seem like the most common infractions, and those aren't really all that complex once you understand the basic mechanics of plays like the system of downs and line of scrimmage. "Illegal Formation" and various others get ridiculously technical and complex, but unless you watch a lot of football (and even then) it's not something that will have much impact and the refs/commentators nearly always explain what the infraction was.

Now that said, I don't mean to undersell the difficulty in learning the simple structure. Trying to teach my kids the rules when they've never played an informal game and were watching NCAA games with me was a helpful exercise at appreciating the weirdness. It's not the most intuitive for sure. If I hadn't grown up with it and had that informal experience as a baseline, I'd also struggle to make sense of the game just watching it without much explanation.

Re: The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win

#79
post #76
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American football is probably pretty straightforward at a very basic level. (And very complex as you dig deeper--coverages, penalties though even the refs seemingly don't understand them a lot of the time, man in motion rules. A lot it's simplified because at any serious level, players do their thing and don't violate most a the less straightforward points that much. I think rugby is pretty similar. As someone who re…

I'm a born American and I don't know the detailed rules to football. Baseball is conceptually easy though. Football seems super messed up with a clock that never seems to end and a game that is 90% commercial breaks.

> Football seems super messed up with a clock that never seems to end

I'm guessing you haven't watched much football then. I'm not saying that as an insult or anything, just a guess. There are plenty of weird things about the game, but the clock isn't one of them IMHO. The clock always runs while the ball is in play. It stops until the start of the next play when a player goes out of bounds or throws an incomplete pass, but continues running after a normal down. Each quarter is 15 minutes of play time, and it's quite strictly applied, and it is always displayed prominently, so it definitely ends. The length of a game is a lot more predictable/understandable than a game like baseball where time is disconnected from game length.

Re: The longest baseball game took 33 innings to win

#80

Imagine doing a beer an inning

A lot of teetotalers here

Indeed. And even among those who do drink, many don't seem to understand very well how widely variable tolerance can be between people. Even someone who only drinks occassionally can still have a much higher tolerance than someone else. Where two drinks might make somebody tipsy or even drunk, to another person they might barely even feel it.
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