If you are doing that at a normal game, you've got a problem...it might be accepted behavior in your social circle, but you have problem.

A lot of teetotalers here

Isner-Mahut in 2010 Wimbledon took 11 hours over 3 days and ended 6-4, 3-6, 6-7, 7-6, 70-68. It can't be repeated since they introduced tie breaks in the fifth set as a direct result of the travesty.

It was dumber than that. Governor Raimondo worked out a loan with the Fenway group that bought the franchise that would keep the team in Pawtucket. The speaker of the House wouldn’t let the bill come to a vote, so the deal died. (I don’t remember his name; I do remember he was from West Warwick.)

The advertisers won.

Hung onto one of those cups for a decade or so. No idea where I got it as I was not at that game.

I still have a couple of those commemorative cups. They live in the cupboard, used only occasionally.

The scoreboard running all the way around the circumference of the cup was awesome. My dad worked in RI for a few years as a kid and we went to a bunch of games at McCoy. I didn't realize until I was older how many long-time big leaguers appeared in that game!

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 begins to take shape.

> 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 far enough before the other team throw the ball back, you might score some points. If you keep failing to hit the ball, you will (probabilistically) soon be out. If the other team catches the ball, you're out. If enough players are out, the teams swap sides and the other team gets to try hitting the ball.

The rest is details. You can find them in any of the videos or articles you've already failed to comprehend without this primer.

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 reffed it at a very casual level, ice hockey seems simpler overall.

Baseball--I don't know but then I grew up with it. You pitch the ball, you hit the ball, you get the ball into play (or not), you run around the bases. Again, lots of subtle points. To actually answer your question, I assume so. But I don't have one myself.

Buy* an old baseball sim game for a few dollars and play a few games from start to finish. Finish a season or two and you will understand more rules than most Americans!

*https://archive.org/details/r.b.i-baseball-21

The game itself is fairly simple; it’s just that it’s existed in codified form for like 140 years and they have had to make rule adjustments in every era to account for the next game-breaking strategy, so the corpus of rules is huge.

Each team gets up to nine turns on offense. If the home team (which would be on offense in the second half of the ninth inning) is ahead when their final turn on offense would occur, the game ends.

Each batter gets pitched to until they hit the ball in-bounds, they get three strikes, or they get four “balls”. A strike occurs when a hittable ball (over home plate, between the batter’s knees and shoulders, as a rough approximation) goes past the batter with no attempt to hit, or when any ball is swung at by the batter without a successful hit in-bounds (so, foul balls are counted as strikes, except that you can’t strike out on a foul - however, if you do hit a foul ball and a defender catches it before it hits the ground, you are out). Almost all other pitches [0] are “balls”, and after four balls the player automatically advances to first base.

Getting all the way back around to home plate scores a point.

After the defending team gets three outs against the batting team, they switch roles.

There are a lot more details and nuance, but that’s baseball in a nutshell.

[0] A very famous example of a pitch that was neither a ball nor a strike against the batter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ih_ovjbwQGk

Hit ball within 90 degrees of home plate position and try to make it to as many bases as possible before being tagged out (by a player holding the ball) or forced out by a player holding the ball tagging a base that you are forced to travel to (due to a runner behind you having to advance or it being first base if you're the batter).

When ball is in air and caught without touching the ground by opposing team, the batter is automatically out and any already onbase runners must return to the tag the base they were on before the hit.

If batter swings and misses its a strike. If a batter doesnt swing but its a fair pitch (over the plate and above knees and at or below chest) its a strike. If the batter hits the ball outside of 90 degree range, its a foul ball and counts as a strike (but cant count for third strike or "strikeout" condition).

If pitcher throws ball outside of fair zone, and batter doesnt swing at it, its a "ball".

If batter gets 3 strikes he's out. If pitcher throws 4 "balls", its a "walk" and batter advances to 1st base for free and any runners on base in front of batter get to advance 1 base as well.

Game is 9 innings, each team gets one turn at offense and one turn at defense per inning. Each team's turn lasts until there are 3 outs.

If teams are still tied at end of 9th inning, they simply continue playing more innings until they are no longer tied. There are no game clocks in baseball.

The summaries always seem to be either “it’s two guys throwing a ball to each other with another guy trying to bat it away with a stick” or “a line drive is out, except when someone pulls a Boston reverse. In that case the guy is still out, but his team (which previously was out) is now in, but only if the ball was originally spinning counter-clockwise. If the ball is spinning clockwise, the team that is out gets an out, and an innings which they can use at any time if they are playing at home, and only during a time out called by the home pitcher if playing away”. There is no in between.