Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Bat This Around
When the Mets scored 7 runs in the 4th inning on Sunday, 12 men came to bat. This gave me a great opportunity to explain to Chase what batting around meant.
I described it as when all 9 men bat in the same inning.
Unbeknownst to me, a debate was raging in baseball circles over whether batting around meant all 9 men, or 10 (a more literal interpretation).
I think it's 9 because batting "around" means getting it back to the first hitter, though not necessarily in that inning.
The biggest thing I learned in my research on this topic, is that there is no consensus and no right answer.
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5 comments:
Everyone who voted "10" please do something for me. Go outside. Walk "around" the block. Are you back at your front door? Or three feet past it? Around is one complete circuit, which occurs when all the batters reach the plate. The 10th guy starts the second time "around" the order.
It's absolutely 9 batters. If Paul leads off the second inning, and 9 batters come to the plate that inning, then Paul leads off again in the third inning. The team batted around in the second inning.
As soon as the batter who started the inning takes his first pitch of his second at bat in the same inning, you,ve batter around. The batter who led off has to have a second at bat to have batted around - or get you back where you started.
9 th batter in the inning doesn't get you around/ back where you started.
I agree with Bill. Paul, in your example, getting back to your front door would mean that you were there twice...the start, and the end. Like the first batter getting up twice in order for it to be 'around'. If you left the door, but never got back to it, you didn't go all the way around.
around is one complete circuit, once you start to retrace the ground, you are going around for the second time
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