Baseball bizarro

To my way of thinking, baseball is based on a set of completely logical rules. Nonetheless, some things don’t add up, don’t seem square or level. Call them mental screwballs.

A baseball catcher is the only player in sports who is positioned out of bounds and squats.

A golf ball is harder than a baseball. Then why is baseball called hardball? Shouldn’t golf be called hardball?

The foul pole is always placed in fair territory. Why isn’t it called a fair pole? Then why not place the foul pole in foul territory and if the ball hits it, then it is a foul ball?

A right handed batter stands in the left side of the batters box and a left handed batter stands in the right side of the batters box. Why is there no place for an even handed person, such as me?

Ground rules are a set of rules that apply specifically to a ball field that are not in the official playing rules e.g. a ball that hits a roof beam at Tropicana Field. A fair ball that bounces over the fence is commonly called a ground-rule double. But that’s not in the ground rules; it’s in the official rules where it is simply called a two-base hit. Personally, I prefer the way “ground-rule” rolls off the tongue. A ground-rule double sounds as if it was struck harder than a two-base hit.

In all my years of announcing games, I cannot recall ever saying ground-rule triple. It’s possible of course. That would happen when a player throws his glove or cap at a ball and touches it. Naturally you don’t see that in professional games. It’s rare even in amateur play.

The first time I saw that on Saipan was at Mt. Carmel ballfield in a 1980’s softball game. The only other time was at Palacios Field during a youth baseball game. That’s twice that I remember which spans three decades and a ton of games. But in neither case did the fielder successfully hit the ball. Which renders moot the question, “if the glove had touched the ball, would the umpires have called a three-base hit or ground rule triple?”

As a kid growing up practicing baseball practically every day, even if we only had a few boys, I remember throwing the glove and hitting the ball was quite an admirable skill, an accomplishment, tough to do. Of course that was never in real games, just kids fooling around, and usually too at the end of a long workout when there was no fence behind you and no other kids to help out and if the ball got by you, that meant a long run.

I got to be pretty good at stopping the ball by throwing my glove at it. Which got me to thinking—what’s so bad about that? It’s an added athletic skill and another dimension to the game. At night I lay sleepless pondering questions like, “would my ability to throw my glove at the ball overcome my other deficiencies to enable me to play professional baseball? Did my chance at the bigs fail because somebody forgot to put that in the rules? Why is baseball the only game where the manager and coaches wear player uniforms, as if some fat old bald 60-year-olds are going to get on the playing field?”

I probably won’t sleep again tonight.

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