Women Watching the World Series: A Baseball Guide
As fall approaches, women who are not baseball fans are faced once again with the prospect of the upcoming World Series. Certainly some of these women can just ignore the World Series and go quietly about their business. Other women can ignore the World Series and complain about it until it’s over. But it is possible for women who haven’t watched a baseball game all season to give the World Series a chance with positive results. With just a little guidance and a few simple steps women can put aside their annoyance and boredom, ordinarily directed at the World Series and those watching it relentlessly, and settle in for the fall classic with a fair chance of enjoying a major sport at the championship level.
Learn the Lingo Women watching the World Series are often turned off and tune out early because announcers insist on using baseball language that the infrequent viewer may at best not understand and at worst find exclusionary. For women attempting to watch the World Series who are not regular baseball enthusiasts just a little foreknowledge of terms frequently used can get you past the opening flurries and into the excitement of the real competition.
For example announcers insist on using the term LCS and its partners ALCS and NLCS. In fact they use them so often during the course of just the first World Series game that those women who are making an effort to watch the World Series inevitably become frustrated and feel as if they are watching our national pastime being broadcast in a foreign language. Like anything else, once you know what the letters mean you will not only enjoy the game more you will find yourself using the abbreviation as frequently as any one else. So, before women start watching the World Series they need to know that LCS simply means League Championship Series. There is a League Championship Series played in the two major leagues of American baseball, namely the American League where the series is called the ALCS ( American League Championship Series) and the National League where the series is called the NLCS ( National League Championship Series ). The winner of each of these series advances to the World Series.
It is natural for announcers to want to inform women watching the World Series and everyone else about how each of the World Series contenders managed to arrive at this final baseball showdown. It is also natural for them to want to shorten the way in which they report this information and so repeatedly women watching the World Series will hear announcers say things like: In the ALCS Johnny hit two home runs. This simply means that in the American League Championship Series Johnny did pretty well for himself, putting two balls out of the park for home runs. Knowing why announcers use these terms can help women to get over the immediate hurdle and watch the start of the game.
But of course the use of abbreviations in many forms continues throughout the contest. For women watching the World Series being able to translate the abbreviations into understandable English can increase the enjoyment or simply the likelihood that women will continue to watch the World Series until its conclusion. Several key abbreviations can help women to muddle through effectively.
ERA is an abbreviation used to evaluate the success of pitchers. ERA stands for Earned Run Average. A pitcher’s Earned Run Average ( ERA ) tells us how many runs a pitcher is likely to give up in each 9 inning performance. Knowing this helps you to make a very good guess about how well a pitcher has been doing during the current season. If the American League contestant in the World Series is going to play a pitcher who has an ERA of 3.45 and the National League team is going to use a pitcher who is sporting an ERA of 7.18 you know right away which team has a better chance as long as those two pitchers are pitching. The pitcher with a 3.45 ERA only gives up an average of about 3 and a half runs per full game whereas the pitcher with 7.18 on average gives up more than 7 runs in a 9 inning game. All other things being equal, it would seem like the team whose pitcher has the lower ERA has the better chance to win.
Of course all other things are seldom equal. As you listen to the game you will also hear the announcer talk about the batters and he will often use the abbreviation RBI. These letters stand for “runs batted In” and they tell viewers how many times a particular batter has come up to bat with some of his teammates already on the bases and has succeeded in getting a hit or taking a walk which allows the others to score a run. A player with 95 RBI’s is much more threatening when he comes up to bat than a player with only 35 RBI’s . In evaluating the batters you will also want to check the players’ batting averages. The higher the batting average the greater the likelihood that a particular player will get a hit. Players with a batting average .250 can be counted on to get a hit almost every fourth time they come to the plate.
For women watching the World Series looking carefully at the statistics can help to tune you in to players capabilities. A team with a number of players with 75 or more RBI’s and batting averages over .300 are more likely to produce lots of runs than teams with lower RBI’s and batting averages. The fun comes in trying to guess how a team with a large number of good hitting players will do against a pitcher who has a very low Earned Run Average ( ERA ). It is interesting to try to guess at the beginning of the game whether hitting or pitching will prevail and then watch the battle play out.
Sometimes the contest between two teams is not just settled by strong pitching performances or good batting. Another factor that may be the decisive is team defense. Good fielding on the part of the entire team can turn the game to their favor. Bad fielding with several errors at key moments can destroy the efforts of pitchers and batters alike by allowing runs to score needlessly. For women watching the World Series it is helpful to check each team and discover the team’s fielding percentage. The higher the percentage the less errors the team is likely to make and the less easy runs they will give up.
Pick Your Team
Another way that the women watching the World Series can stay involved and enjoy the series is to select a team to cheer for. Of course, if you want to cheer for a winner the way to make this selection is to consider the relative statistics of each team as discussed above. Select the team that has the best total picture, good pitching, good hitting and good fielding.
But going by the statistics is not the only way to choose a team to cheer for. Let’s face it, the two teams that have survived their individual LCS ( League Championship Series ) are likely to be pretty competitive with no clear cut statistical advantage visible . One may have good hitting while the other has good pitching and fielding but both teams will have some solid stats to consider. For some women watching the World Series is more fun to choose teams in a less scientific way.
Some women watching the World Series like to select teams that are geographically the nearest to where these women live. If you live in Rhode Island it is more likely that you will cheer for the Philadelphia Phillies than the Seattle Mariners. Some women watching the World Series cheer for teams because there is special player on the team that they relate to. When the Red Sox were playing in 2004 many women watching the World Series cheered for Boston because of Johnny Damon. Some women watching the World Series may choose to cheer for a team because of their team color . After all there are some people who could never cheer for the Orioles because their team colors of Black and Orange are too Halloween. On the other hand some women watching the World Series could be drawn to cheer for the St. Louis Cardinals because of the logo of a cardinal sitting atop crossed bats. Women watching the World Series can use any means at their disposal to determine the team they are cheering for and be confident that in fact their method of choosing has as much chance of leading them to back the eventual winner as anyone else’s. There are only two teams playing, so women watching the world series have a 50/50 chance of guessing the World Series Champion . Make your choice and enjoy.
Getting into the Fray Knowing the lingo and selecting a favorite can take women watching the World Series a long way toward enjoying this year’s competition. But maintaining interest and enthusiasm through a full World Series may require some additional effort.
Women watching the World Series can make it more fun by turning it into a party. Inviting family or friends over for one or more of the games adds a celebratory element to the event. Or work with others to shift the venue for watching the World Series from night to night. Serve food or drinks that are symbolic of the teams that are playing. Wear team hats, shirts or simply the colors of the team for which you are cheering. Make signs or decorations . Add to the excitement by making fun wagers about the out come of the series – loser cleans the winners garage, rakes their backyard, or runs errands at the grocery store. Side wagers with lower stakes keep the interest high. Create a sheet of possibilities for each game – who will score the winning run, strike out the most batters, hit a home run and give fun prizes to the winners.
If children are involved, women watching the World Series can also turn the event into a subtle chance to educate the kids. Put a map on the wall and locate the cities that are home to the rivals. Talk about the two cities, their landmarks, other sports teams in the city, geographic features, annual weather patterns, whatever will add to a child’s understanding of that city. Help the kids to choose a team to cheer for and to participate with team colors, logo, banners whatever it takes to stir their interest and imagination. Women watching the World Series will not surprisingly find that when they turn their energy to helping others to celebrate the fun of the World Series they begin to enjoy it more themselves.
For women who do not frequently watch baseball, the prospect of the upcoming World Series need not be dreary. Putting just a little effort into preparing to watch the World Series can have remarkable results. Learning the lingo, choosing a team to cheer for and really making the game interactive can provide women watching the World Series with a new and positive perspective on the event and possibly on baseball itself.
