David Huzzard: Baseball is a simple game ...

I'm certain that you've heard the saying that baseball is a simple game a number of times in your life as a sports fan. But a startling number of people don't seem to understand how simple it is. Broadcasters and hot-take journalists are always talking about players knowing or not knowing how to win. The highest level of baseball I played was t-ball, and even as a wee lad, I knew how to win. Baseball is not complicated in this regard and it is, in fact, one of the things that make it the best sport out there.

In most sports, the team that wins is the team with the most points when time expires, but baseball is different. There is no clock (except the one that now counts down the commercial breaks) and the team with the most runs after nine innings wins. It is a very simple concept and it is difficult to imagine that any major league player is lacking in this knowledge.

There are some nuances to the rule, like what an inning is or what happens if the teams are tied after nine innings, but again there are very simple answers to this that should help anyone that doesn't know how to win. An inning is not a measure of a passage of time, even though time passes while an inning is happening. Baseball is a turn-based sport and everyone gets a turn. There are six total outs in an inning. The away team is afforded three outs and bats first, and once it has used all three of its outs, the home team gets its turn at the plate. This proceeds for nine innings - or eight and a half if the home team has a lead after the top of the ninth inning.

No radical concepts here, and I am confused as to why some people think there is an epidemic of players that don't know how to win. Baseball is simple, and when broken down, it can sound even simpler. Think for a moment of all the outcomes to a plate appearance. There are an overwhelming number of possibilities, but a plate appearance is a binary event. The batter either reaches base or the opposing team prevents him from reaching base.

The object of the game of baseball is to have more runs at the end of nine innings, but the game has to get there first and the object of an inning is the either reach base or to stop your opponent from doing so, depending on whose turn it is. These basic facts shouldn't cause a debate as they are literally the rules of the game but for some reason they do. Joey Votto in Cincinnati believes reaching base is good; some people in that city disagree and accuse him of not knowing how to win. I would say they're the ones that don't know how to win as they want to ignore the basic concepts of the game.

Let's think about the Votto debate for a second. On one side, you have a man who likes getting on base and extending his team's turn at bat, giving them more chances to score a run and thus a better chance of having more runs after nine innings than their opponent. Then there is the side that says this is a bad thing and that Votto should stop trying to get on base because getting on base doesn't help the team win. This would be like someone telling Bubba Watson that you don't win the Masters by hitting the golf ball into the hole in fewer strokes than your opponents.

While many people who are paid to talk and write about sports argue about athletes knowing how to win, I would argue that most 6-year-olds at the lowest level who will never pass that level of a sport know how to win. The basic, fundamental rules of a sport are the first thing anyone learns. Baseball is a simple game. Score more runs than your opponent while forcing them to use up all their turns over nine innings and your team wins.

David Huzzard blogs about the Nationals at Citizens of Natstown. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHuzzard. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our regular roster of writers.