Baseball is a very complicated sport. Every facet of the game from tagging up to stealing bases to intentional walks goes back to the duel between pitcher and batter. This book, like no other work available or any single website, explains baseball from scratch, while also educating the reader as to its important place in American history and culture. Part One, "Preliminaries," explains those aspects of the game that must be understood before approaching the game itself, which is the subject of Part Two, "The Game." Part Three, "Statistics," discusses how numbers influence the decisions and strategies that propel each game forward. Part Four, "Major League Baseball Overview," puts the sport in context by introducing the reader to Major League baseball in a unique way: by walking him or her through one calendar year in the majors, from the Hall of Fame voting in January through the Winter Meetings in December.