How To Watch Blaseball

Kimberly: Hello listeners! You are listening to Take Me Out To The Blall Game, the world's most attentively blaseball podcast. I'm your host, Kimberly Dauber, and I use she/her pronouns.

I am love blaseball, but sometimes I am also find blaseball kind of hard to follow, especially when I'm trying to watch the games. They just all kind of go past really fast, and it's hard to keep track of what's going on, and I just get confused and lost sometimes. So today we're going to talk to Patrick Caster, aka SplortsCaster, of the Blaseball News Network, who has some pro tips for how to watch a blaseball game. Just think of it like a blessing to enhance your baseball viewing experience. We'll be right back with those tips after this short break.

Today's episode of Take Me Out To The Blall Game was splonsored by the Committee for Crab Congratulations.

Congratulations to the Baltimore Crabs on being the first blaseball team ever to ascend! Since I'm in the sky, I saw you rising up past my window. There was this huge, tall tower of crabs, and the ones on the bottom of the tower kept climbing up to the top, and then the new ones that were newly on the bottom would climb up to the top, and then those ones on the bottom would climb up to the top and, like, you get the idea. But it went so fast, like FWOOSH! Way up there, and I don't even know where they went. Way up higher than me. So congratulations to the Crabs on your ascension. We're going to miss you so much. We wish you the best as your claws go up up and away.

Hey there listeners, we are back in the studio talking with Patrick Caster of the Blaseball News Network. Today we are talking about how to watch blaseball. It can get a little confusing with all the numbers and text flying by on the screen, so Patrick's gonna help us figure out how to follow that. So hello Patrick, thanks for coming on the show. What should we call you, what are your pronouns, and is the commissioner doing a great job?

Patrick: Thank you for having me. You can just call me Patrick or SplortsCaster. My pronouns are he/him, and the commissioner is always doing a great job.

Kimberly: Excellent, thank you so much, Patrick. So first question, I'm just wondering, like, when you're watching blaseball, what do you watch that's making the games so exciting?

Patrick: Well, I think, like, the first thing is probably the home team you have. When you watch your home team, you have a real connections the game. You watch and you go, "I want you to win." You can see in the numbers the possibilities of it winning, but you always say, "my team's gonna win." You're gonna bet against the odds, you're gonna go, "yes my team is right here," and it gives you, it gives you a ability to see the game in a different light, almost. You don't just see just two teams, you see my team and the enemy team, almost.

Kimberly: So you can go on the blaseball website and find the game that your team is playing in currently and watch that, and then just focusing in on that you can feel connected to the rest of your team, too, probably?

Patrick: Yeah. I find that, like, it doesn't matter how good your team is anyway, too. If your team is the Tacos, for example, you could be losing all the time, but every time you're going to be like, "yes, but I want to win, I want to see them win." Or you could be rooting for the Crabs, and you would be winning over and over again, you go "yes, my team is the best."

Kimberly: Okay, okay, that sounds like a good way to get like excited and into blaseball during the regular season. Watch your home team, root for them, you want them to win, you're betting on them even though they might not be slated to win.

Patrick: Exactly.

Kimbelry: That's great for the regular season. What about when we get to the postseason and the championships and the Internet Series and all of that? Because, you know, not every team makes it. So how do you watch it at that point?

Patrick: When you get to that it's good to look at the numbers that point. See who's won previously and see who has never been in the finals before. When it comes to that stuff, it's always very interesting, because say, ascension, for example, if we have the Tigers in there or we have the Baltimore Crabs in there or the Pies in there, you see them and you're like, "Ah, we could see something completely different if they win. Let's see how they do." Or you see some brand new team could be in the finals like the Fridays or something, you say "Oh, how will they do? Could they win this time?" It's interesting to see a team that has already won, see if they can do it again, or see a team that is a big loser or just hasn't made it before, it's good to see them, if they can do better this time, or if they could be the best team for this time.

Kimberly: Okay. How can you find out which teams are new, which teams of been here before, which teams from before?

Patrick: There tends to be a couple different places you can look for these very basic statistics. SIBR will have some kind of surface level stuff for you, but you just need to do a little digging and you can find the wins of the previous blaseball seasons.

Kimberly: Alright yeah, we'll put the link to the SIBR website in the show notes so people can look there to find out which teams have been winners previously in there. Okay, alright, very cool. So one more question: What else is particularly exciting about watching the championships, besides seeing which teams have made it in before, could lead us to ascension, or which teams might come through and be the winners and underdogs - aside from that, which is amazing for story arcs - what what else is exciting about watching the championships?

Patrick: I'd say probably the higher level play. You can see some really cool plays happen. For example, you could see, like, you could see something along the lines of a grand slam more than once in the game, or you could just see home run after home run, because you'll get those stronger players like Jessica Telephone or Nagomi, they just have these great ability to hit. And you can see these great grand slams, or you can see out after out after out from someone like Axel Trololol, who have these great pitching - they have this great ability to pitch.

Kimberly: Okay, okay, yeah yeah, it reminds me of the Charleston Shoe Thieves' end of the very last finals that we had in season nine, where the Shoe Thieves were down two points, and then in the bottom of the ninth, someone hit a three run home run to win the game.

Patrick: And if you call back even further in season three of blaseball, the Tigers had lost the previous game after Landry Violence died and Jessica had hit two separate home runs in that game.

Kimberly: Yeah yeah, I remember that people talking about Jessica Telephone, like, avenging Landry Violence.

Patrick: Yeah, that was, that was a great set of plays.

Kimberly: I love the way that cool plays like that just make the entire fandom feel electric, like, if I'm hanging out on Discord or if I'm watching a stream and something happens, everyone starts texting in all caps!

Patrick: Yeah, did you see the - real quick aside, did you see the three run walk a person got?

Kimberly: No? What?

Patrick: So you know the the base - there was the bonus one team got that was, like, the base blood bonus. And so it gave them, it gave them the ability to go across more bases. And so the bases were loaded, and the person got a walk, and they walked to third! So they got a three run walk.

Kimberly: Wow, that's amazing. All right, listeners, that's it for the first half of our show. We'll be right back with more tips about how to watch baseball and what to look out for right after this short break. Thanks for listening.

Hey there listeners! Today we've got a soulscream from Grace. Grace, thank you so much for joining our little community, and I think your soulscream is delightful. Here it is: HEEEOTIMLEEERBKAHHHSXXIXIRH!

Oh my gosh, I just love these so much! Grace, thank you again for sending in your soulscream. We really appreciate it. Listeners, if you would like to send in a soulscream or dedicate one to a fellow blaseball fan, go to blaseballpodcast.com, head over to the contact page, and submit it right there. Or you can email it to us at blaseballpodcast@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing your soulscreams.

Hello there, listeners! You are listening to Take Me Out To The Blall Game. We are back with blaseball watching pro tips with SplortsCaster Patrick Caster of the Blaseball News Network. In the first half of the show, we talked a bit about what makes it exciting to watch a baseball game. Maybe you're rooting for your home team, or maybe you're watching championships where someone could win their very first one or their third one and possibly ascend, or maybe some wild and crazy play will happen. But now in the second half, I want to ask Patrick a slightly different question. Patrick, I love watching blaseball, but honestly, some of the teams just kind of...well, they lose a lot. And I love them very much, but how do you watch their games and get excited about them? What's your advice for people whose teams tends to be on the losing end of games?

Patrick: Well, losing teams always have their own set of kind of interest to them right? Because you have a team that loses a bunch, but things change in blaseball very quickly, so you have always kind of an underdog mentality. Even if you're rooting for the Tacos, which have a history of losing in the past, you always want to see them win. For example, I believe it was season eight, they had a game, a set of games against the Crabs, and the Crabs won only one of those games and the Tacos won two. Although the Tacos were a main loser in that series, it was amazing to see them beat the Crabs more than once.

Kimberly: Okay okay, so yeah, plus in blaseball there's always this chance for something weird to happen that suddenly turns a team around completely because there's so many things changing so constantly.

Patrick: Yeah, from just even one player getting traded or perhaps a teammate unfortunately dying - sorry, getting incinerated - you could have a quick and sudden change for the team. All the Tacos' pitchers were Shelled at one point, and what they brought out was the Pitching Machine, and the Pitching Machine actually did quite well to pitch for that team, and it's kind of interesting to see that sort of thing that can change the game for them. Although the Pitching Machine wasn't causing them to be the number one team or anything, it really changed the game for them.

Kimberly: Yeah yeah, and it definitely brought a lot of focus to those games and to that team because it was cool to watch the Pitching Machine!

Patrick: Exactly, and then you could have something like the Fridays, where out not all their team is the best, but you have a player like York Silk on there as well that's really trying to push them forward. And although the teammates around York Silk are trying their best to make sure that they all can try to win together. And then you see things like the weather events and all that kind of stuff that can just change your game out of nowhere, where a loser becomes the winner.

Kimberly: Yeah yeah, there is so much that can happen. Alright, well, we're almost out of time for today, but before we go, Patrick, thank you again so much for being on the show.

Patrick: Thank you for having me.

Kimberly: One more question: what are you love about blaseball?

Patrick: What am I love about blaseball? I love just seeing the teams play. Since the beginning, I always keep my eye out on interesting games. I do have my own favorite team, but I just like to watch everything that I can. It's so interesting to see all these different kinds of plays happen and these different teams interact. That's why I am love about baseball.

Kimberly Alright, thank you so much, Patrick, thanks for coming on the show. Listeners, that's all we've got for today. Mr. SplortsCaster, where can our listeners find you?

Patrick: You can find me @SplortsCaster on Twitter. or occasionally you can find me on the Blaseball News Network website making articles.

Kimberly: Alrighty, thank you so much. Listeners, remember to subscribe to Take Me Out To The Blall Game wherever podcasts are found, follow us on Twitter @baseball_pod, and email us at blaseballpodcast@gmail.com. You can send us in a question, dedicate a soulscream to a fellow blaseball fan, or suggest something that we should interview you about. And if you know anyone else who would enjoy listening to Take Me Out To The Blall Game, do them a favor and tell them about the show. I bet they will be glad that you did. I am Kimberly Dauber, this has been Take Me Out To The Blall Game, and thank you for participating in the cultural event of blaseball.