Depending on whom you believe, baseball is "a game of inches" (Branch Rickey), a "religion" (Hall of Fame umpire Bill Klem), or "A kid’s game that grown-ups only tend to screw up" (Bob Lemon).

If you go by The Book, however, baseball is a game "between two teams of nine players each, under the direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under the jurisdiction of one or more umpires." Sounds simple enough, right? Well, even the simplest things can get confused. Not so many years ago, Angels center fielder Devon White was making a phone call in the clubhouse as the game got underway. The first pitch was thrown before right fielder Chili Davis was able to draw the umpires’ attention to the fact that the Angels were fielding an eight-man defense. Davis blamed it on the umpires: "They’re not only blind," Davis observed. "They’re deaf, too." [1.01]

The Book next tells us the objective is to score more runs than your opponent and that the winner shall be the team with more runs at the game’s conclusion. [1.02 and 1.03]

These rules are obvious enough even to a baseball novice. And for the purposes of the opening section of The Book, it’s the whole story as far as the objectives of the game are concerned. The framers of the rules apparently decided that in The Book, the detailed discussion of the intricacies of playing the game should follow the specifications for its implements and the environs in which the game is to be played. Thus it is with the field and the equipment that this chapter is primarily concerned. So let us take you out to the ballpark.

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