Why did baseball become so popular in the United States and eventually earn the name: “America’s Great Pastime”? There are a lot of answers to that but perhaps the easiest way to explain it is that it may only take an afternoon to learn to play the game but it can take a lifetime to master it. It involves knowing at every moment what the game situation is. How many outs, how many strikes does that batter have on him, is he a lefty or a righty, is the guy on first base fast or slow, where do I throw the ball if ‘A’ ‘B’ or ‘C’ happens. More so than just about any World Sport it is considered the thinking persons game and though hitting a fast moving baseball with a bat successfully is considered one of the hardest things in all of sports (A professional that can manage to do it just 3 times out of 10 is usually making about $10 million USD per year), it is not a sport where a particular physical ability is needed. You don’t have to be particularly fast, quick, strong, short, or tall. The main ability is to be able to learn the game. Its nuances and quirks mean that each position on the fiend requires different traits and each position in the batting order is designed for athletes of different skills.