In baseball, the field manager (commonly referred to as the manager) is an individual who is responsible for matters of team strategy on the field and team leadership. Managers are typically assisted by between one and six assistant coaches, whose responsibilities are specialized. A manager is essentially equivalent to the head coach in other North American professional sports leagues.

The manager chooses the batting order and starting pitcher before each game, and makes substitutions throughout the game – among the most significant being those decisions regarding when to bring in a relief pitcher. How much control a manager takes in a games strategy varies from manager to manager and from game to game. Some managers control pitch selection, defensive positioning, decisions to bunt, steal, pitch out, etc., while others designate an assistant coach or a player (often the catcher) to make some or all of these decisions.

Some managers choose to act as their team's first base or third base coach while their team is batting in order to more closely communicate with baserunners, but most managers delegate this responsibility to an assistant. Managers are typically assisted by two or more coaches

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond. Players on the batting team take turns hitting against the pitcher of the fielding team, which tries to stop them from scoring runs by getting hitters out in any of several ways. A player on the batting team can stop at any of the bases and later advance via a teammate's hit or other means. The teams switch between batting and fielding whenever the fielding team records three outs. One turn at bat for each team constitutes an inning and nine innings make up a professional game. The team with the most runs at the end of the game wins.

Evolving from older bat-and-ball games, an early form of baseball was being played in England by the mid-eighteenth century. This game was brought by immigrants to North America, where the modern version developed. By the late nineteenth century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States. Baseball is now popular in North America, parts of Central and South America and the Caribbean, and parts of East Asia.

Alan Wray Tudyk (born March 16, 1971) is an American actor known for his roles as Hoban "Wash" Washburne in the science fiction/western television series Firefly and movie Serenity, Simon in the British comedy Death at a Funeral, as Steve the Pirate in DodgeBall: A True Underdog Story, as Sonny in the science fiction drama I, Robot, as Doc Potter in 3:10 to Yuma, as Tucker in Tucker & Dale vs Evil and as Alpha in Dollhouse. He currently co-stars on the ABC sitcom Suburgatory.

Tudyk was born in El Paso, Texas, the son of Betty Loyce (née Wiley) and Timothy Nicholas Tudyk. He is of Polish and English descent and was raised in the Dallas suburb of Plano, Texas, where he attended Plano Senior High School. Tudyk studied drama at the Methodist-affiliated Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas where he won the Academic Excellence award for drama. While in college, he played Beaver Smith in an eastern New Mexico summer stock theater production of Billy the Kid. Tudyk entered Juilliard but left in 1996 before earning a degree.

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American baseball player who became the first black Major League Baseball (MLB) player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. As the first black man to play in the major leagues since the 1880s, he was instrumental in bringing an end to racial segregation in professional baseball, which had relegated black players to the Negro leagues for six decades. The example of his character and unquestionable talent challenged the traditional basis of segregation, which then marked many other aspects of American life, and contributed significantly to the Civil Rights Movement.

In addition to his cultural impact, Robinson had an exceptional baseball career. Over ten seasons, he played in six World Series and contributed to the Dodgers' 1955 World Championship. He was selected for six consecutive All-Star Games from 1949 to 1954, was the recipient of the inaugural MLB Rookie of the Year Award in 1947, and won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1949—the first black player so honored. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. In 1997, Major League Baseball retired his uniform number, 42, across all major league teams.

Michael Scott Matheny (born September 22, 1970 in Reynoldsburg, Ohio) is an American former professional baseball player and the current manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. He played in Major League Baseball as a catcher for four different teams during his thirteen year playing career. Although Matheny wasn't a powerful hitter, he was considered one of the best defensive catchers of his era, winning four National League Gold Glove Awards. He is one of only three catchers in Major League history to catch at least 100 games in a single season without committing an error.

Matheny grew up in Ohio and attended the University of Michigan, where he was the co-captain of the Michigan Wolverines baseball team. He was drafted in the 8th round of the 1991 Major League Baseball Draft by the Milwaukee Brewers, and spent the next three years in their minor league system. He made his major league debut with the Brewers on April 7, 1994 at the age of 23, and became their starting catcher early in the 1995 season. At the end of the 1998 season, Matheny became eligible for salary arbitration and the Brewers made the decision to grant him free agency on December 21, 1998. He signed a contract to play for the Toronto Blue Jays during the 1999 season during which he played as a backup catcher to Darrin Fletcher. After only one season in Toronto, he was released by the Blue Jays and signed to play for the St. Louis Cardinals on December 15, 1999.