The goal in baseball is to score more points than the opposing team wins. In order for there to be annotations, the attacking team will try to hit the ball thrown by the pitcher to advance through each of the bases until they complete the circuit and go up to home plate and thus get a run.
But the story of how many “balls” and “hits” it takes has changed over the years. In 1845, The Knickerbocker Baseball Club created 20 rules and put them in writingwhich is considered the foundation of what is known as baseball, but the problem of strikes and balls has not been specified in these.
At that time it already existed that if a hitter swung on three shots and didn’t hit them, he could no longer hit, but there was a timing issue. The pitchers threw away from the hitters to prevent them from trying to hit him, with the goal of boring them not being able to hit and swing on any pitch.
Finally, a strike zone was created in 1858, where if a batter first missed a beatable pitch he received a warning, giving way to three strikes (to be eliminated). But with no penalty for the pitcher throwing away from the batter, the pace of play was still slow (can you imagine 40-50 innings of pitching?).
Thus, in 1863 it was implemented to sing balls, having nine as a number to reach first base. It remained like this for 17 years, until the number was reduced: in 1880 it was reduced to eight, in 1882 to seven and in 1884 to six.
In 1887 the number of balls was lowered to five and the warning roll was removed, leaving it with three good rolls to hit. Then in 1889 came the final step: finally a balance has been found and left four bad shots with which a base was given away on balls and in three strikes the shots that could be hit and let them pass or swings in which they failed.
What is a ball and a strike?
To begin with, the so-called “Ball” is what might be called a pitcher’s throwing error, with the caveat that a ball can be thrown “wrong” on purpose. A “Strike” would be the opposite, a nice roll for the pitcher.
From the batter’s point of view, the ball counts for him and the strike counts against him.
Balls and strikes are defined at the discretion of the umpire behind the plate and the catcher, with the same main judge keeping track of each hitter.
The difference whether a pitch is called a ball or a strike is the position of that court. when it goes on the plate at home and for this the concept of “strike zone”.
This can be defined as the vertical throw of home plate whose limits are the point immediately below the knees and the midpoint of the torso of the batter. That is, with respect to the height of the launch, while the width of that area is the same as the plate or pentagon.
A field that falls outside that plane is marked as a “ball” and a field that passes just inside that bounded space is marked as a “hit” by the referee.
However, the aforementioned is not the only way to flag a strike on the account because it is also considered to be so. the inability of the batter to hit the ball with the wand, regardless of whether he crossed the strike zone or not.
Likewise, a foul shot is also marked as a strike, which is one in which the ball falls out of bounds of the playing field or diamond.
Source: Clarin
