I recently was given a copy of O'Reilly's Baseball Hacks and have really enjoyed digging into a deeper level of understanding baseball. Yes, I watch a fair amount of baseball, but I'm only beginning to understand some of the strategies that come into play during the game (e.g. pitching to a batter or positioning the players on the field).

A few hacks of note:

• Hack #1: Score a Baseball Game - I never knew how scoring a game worked, very usefull to know how the stats are recorded.
• Hack #4: Follow Pitches During the Game - this is a great introduction to learning what goes on as the pitcher faces each batter, the hack also includes ways to identify the various types of pitches and pitch locations.
• Hack #8, 10, 16, 18 20 and many more - use MySQL to import, store, crunch, query and present your baseball data.
• Hack #13: …