![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hey, sports fans (part 2)
I'll tell you something, though. I learned the infield fly rule from my brother - and it wasn't that I didn't understand it before, it was just that I'd heard of it and didn't know what it said. So we're sitting at dinner, and I said to my brother, "So what's this infield fly rule that I hear is so impossible to understand." And he told me, and after I wondered briefly what was so difficult about that, my sister-in-law and I wondered where he'd learned it from. And he shrugged and said he just sort of knows it. And I mentioned how I'd been confused about offsides at the hockey game and he said "Right, hockey's offside rule is different from soccer's", and went on to demonstrate that he knew both.
Now, my brother has always liked baseball, and used to play soccer, but we grew up in Cleveland, where there are no hockey fans. How did he know this? How did I spend so long thinking goaltending (in basketball) was a sort of offside issue (it's really, really not)? How, more to the point, did he not spend years under this misconception? How did he learn so much stuff that I missed?
My sister-in-law and I were both flummoxed by this. It's not, she pointed out, like the commentators ever elaborate when they tell you what rule was just invoked. (At least in football the referee announces the penalty in real words, and the penalties have descriptive names, like "illegal man downfield".) Do they take the boys aside one day in high school and teach them all the different but similarly-named rules in the different sports? Is it what they're doing in health class while we're learning about tampons or something? Honestly.
Now, my brother has always liked baseball, and used to play soccer, but we grew up in Cleveland, where there are no hockey fans. How did he know this? How did I spend so long thinking goaltending (in basketball) was a sort of offside issue (it's really, really not)? How, more to the point, did he not spend years under this misconception? How did he learn so much stuff that I missed?
My sister-in-law and I were both flummoxed by this. It's not, she pointed out, like the commentators ever elaborate when they tell you what rule was just invoked. (At least in football the referee announces the penalty in real words, and the penalties have descriptive names, like "illegal man downfield".) Do they take the boys aside one day in high school and teach them all the different but similarly-named rules in the different sports? Is it what they're doing in health class while we're learning about tampons or something? Honestly.