Baseball Field Guide, Fourth Edition

Are you new to watching or participating in baseball? Curious why that runner was called out? Wonder why this batter got to go to first base without hitting the ball?
Are you just confused about the rules? Want to know more?
This is the all purpose-everything you want to know Baseball book for you .
Literally covers everything….and I mean everything.uniforms, gloves, the balls, the scorecard, the field,
Every player position. The rules of what is allowed or not. The umpires, the leagues. Drugs allowed and not, Betting, skirmishes, spectator interference, the playoffs.
Brilliantly done, fan and casual reader friendly.. highly recommend this one!
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me this ARC.

It’s all there. A comprehensive guide to all you need to know about baseball rules, statistics, and the professional leagues. Demystify the roster of a Major League team. Find out the required storage temperature and humidity percentage for baseballs. Calculate your favorite pitcher’s Earned Run Average. This edition has all the updated rule changes for the 2023 season. Play ball!

Thank you Netgalley for the advance reader copy of Baseball Field Guide, Fourth Edition by Dan Formosa; Paul Hamburger in exchange for an honest review. With baseball starting this book is very handy. I would have loved to have this book when I first started watching baseball in 2010. There is so much useful information that really gives a wonderful overview of the game and everything about it.

The Baseball Field Guide, 4th Edition, helps you learn about "every inch of the baseball (from the core to the stitches!)".  As the introduction says, the basic rules are second nature to those who watch the sport regularly (me) but the official rules can be surprisingly complex. Which is true. Every now and then some weird situation comes up and you kind of wish you had a rule guide in your back pocket - and now you can!  I liked how this book has the rules broken down and there's also graphics and images to help you understand what's going on.  With several new rules coming to MLB this season, now that I have this field guide available to me I'll hopefully be a bit less confused while I root on my Mets!

I received a free e-copy of this book from NetGalley in order to write this review. I was not otherwise compensated.

5 stars

I decided it would be a really good idea to get into baseball for real because I read a baseball romance book or two and was ~influenced ~. I thought I would be able to pick it up quick because I've been regularly exposed to baseball as I am a red blooded American and you can't go five feet without ending up in a ballpark or watching Moneyball again. But that was my sports watching hubris tricking me because baseball is absolute nonsense to watch (or listen to) if you don't know what's going on.

That's where this book comes in! I wanted a quick reference for the structure of the game and the rules because the best way to tell sportsbros they are wrong on the internet is with citations. The baseball field guide was especially helpful because it has a chapter on how the game is played and what the heck is going on out there, helpful diagrams, a description of all eight million ways a balk can happen, and descriptions and diagrams for all the other (written) Rules of Baseball. It has helped me open my third eye to the Knowledge of the Baseball and I can now mostly understand what's going on and argue with people online about it after.

I have not read it cover to cover because it's meant as more of a quick reference when a baseball thing happens in a game so I look it up when my team does something to better understand what the heck just happened and why. Next up is looking up the infield fly rule lol.

Highly recommend to anyone looking for a quick reference on baseball rules! Go Rays!