One of the things I remember from being a complete baseball illiterate and reading Moneyball was trying to decode the rules and how the game is played based on the descriptions of statistics and surrounding context. I took it as a challenge to not look up a single term (these are obvious terms to someone who knows anything about baseball, mind you, like "get on base", "walk", and "strike out" – but completely foreign to me at the time).

It went fairly well, but I probably still wouldn't be able to actively follow a real game. If I at some point re-read Moneyball, I would probably want to get a primer on how baseball is played first.

Oddly enough, I led a Meetup group to see that movie. There were nine people, almost all non-Americans.

Afterwards I asked for a show of hands:

"How many liked it?" Everyone raised their hand.

"How many are baseball fans?" Only one person.

If you are an English speaker outside the US, you probably know about a game called cricket. Baseball was very obviously derived from cricket about 200 years ago and has evolved quite a bit since then. But if you know cricket, baseball is not confusing.

Also, a baseball game takes a lot less time than a cricket match.