But it should be amusing to see what people com up with. I once spent more than an hour on a plane sitting next to a fellow from Pakistan, with each of us trying to explain our respective national games to the other (cricket, baseball). We talked and talked, and drew pages and pages of diagrams. Neither of us got it. I still don't understand cricket, and I'm pretty sure baseball is even harder to get.

I like your story. It's true; baseball and cricket are elusive sports if you didn't grow up around them. In my three years living in Britain, many friends attempted to explain the rules of cricket to me while actually watching matches and i still don't really understand it. Maybe they can't be learned--I think you have to be genetically predisposed to one sport or the other.

jcavilia:

But it should be amusing to see what people com up with. I once spent more than an hour on a plane sitting next to a fellow from Pakistan, with each of us trying to explain our respective national games to the other (cricket, baseball). We talked and talked, and drew pages and pages of diagrams. Neither of us got it. I still don't understand cricket, and I'm pretty sure baseball is even harder to get.

Never mind how baseball and cricket are different; look at how they're similar. The defensive team takes the field; the offensive team bats, one player at a time. Said batter tries to score a run by hitting a thrown ball with a stick and then running a prescribed circuit before the other team can put him out, by either catching the ball before it hits the gorund, or by tagging him with the ball while he's running. After a prescribed number of outs the teams change batting and fielding and so on until the prescribed turns of batting and fielding ("inning(s)") are completed.

The rest are just details.