Baseball

let´s play baseball.-

Objetives:
Students must learn the rules and routines to practise the game.
Baseball is a bat and ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The goal of baseball is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four markers called bases, placed at the corners of a ninety-foot Square, or DIAMOND. Players on one team take turns hitting against the pitcher in the other team.
The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins.

History.
An early form of baseball was played in England by the mid-eighteenth Century. This game was brought by British and Irish immigrants to North America, where the modern version of baseball developed. By the late nineteenth Century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United Stated. Baseball on the professional, amateur, and youth levels, is now popular in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East and Southeast Asia.

Rules and gameplay.-
The game is played between two teams, each composed of nine players, that take turn playing on offense (batting or hitting team) and defense (fielding or pitching team). A pair of turns, one at bat and one in the field, by each team constitutes an INNING; there are nine innings in a game. One team (the visiting team) bats in the first half of every inning; the other team (the home time) bats in the second half of every inning. The goal of a game is to score more points (runs) than the other team.
The game is played on a field where the primary boundaries, the foul lines, extend forward from home plate at 45- degree angles. The 90-degree area within the foul lines is referred to as fair territory; the 270-degree area outside them is foul territory.
There are three basics tools of baseball: the ball, the bat, and the glove.
At the beginning of each half-inning, the nine players on the field team arrange themselves around the field. One of them, the pitcher, stands on the pitcher´s mound. Another player, the catcher, squats on the far side of home plate, facing the pitcher.
Gameplay starts with a batter standing at home plate holding a bat. The batter waits for the pitcher to throw a pitch ( the ball) towards home plate, and attempts to hit the ball with the bat. The catcher catches pitches that the batter does not hit, and returns them to the pitcher. If the batter hits the ball into the field of play, he must drop the bat and begin running toward first base, at which point he is referred to as a runner. If the runner successfully reaches first base, he is said to be safe there and is now on base.