The Pecan Park Eagle

Look it up. It's in the book.

Back in the 19th century, the rules of baseball scoring changed radically from year to year. The leaders of the professional movement responded to the complaints and criticisms of others in an ongoing struggle to fine tune the game to just the right balance between offense and defense as that sort of thing was perceived to be for that day at a time.

In 1887, for example, the rules makers gave the batter a fourth strike before he could be retired. In 1888, they took it back, The batter was back to the key spot of “three strikes and you’re out” in plenty of time to not mess up Jack Norworth’s and Albert Tilzer’s 1908 baseball anthem, “Take Me Out To the Ball Game” – or that wonderful Mudville lament about the absence of joy after Casey took strike three.

Can you imagine singing, “‘for it’s one, two, three, four strikes you’re out in the old ball game?” – Neither can I?

Perhaps the screwiest book changes of 1888 were rules 6.08 and 10.13

Rule 6.08 gave a hit batsman first base and credit for a base hit because of the pitch that struck him.

Rule 10.13, among other things, also awarded the pitcher an error for hitting the batsman with a thrown ball.

Didn’t anyone do contradiction or irony searches among the various rules changes back then? Apparently not. Where is the common sense of awarding a hit to one player and an error to another for nothing more than what happened on one thrown pitch?

The error charge to the pitcher on a hit batsman was removed the following year, 1889. I’m not really sure when the hit credit to the batter on a “HBP” was removed, but fell it did too as ludicrous, but certainly not as silly as some of the earlier rules. Back in 1869, for example, baseball gave strong attention to how many runs a player scored and no attention to the players who drove the runs across the plate. Also in 1869, baseball devalued base runners for being forced out at the next base on infield plays. The presumption was that the runner should have been fast enough to have already moved up – or athletic enough to have broken up the play before the “out” was registered.

As long as we stick with 4 balls, 3 strikes, 9 innings. 90 feet bases and a 60’6″ pitching distance theater of operations, we should be OK – if we can just find a way to bury the dad gum designated hitter option.

NOTE: I may not be writing here daily over the next two to three months. The research, writing, and editorial demands of our SABR Early Houston Baseball History Project are beginning to take a toll on the time and energy I usually have available for a daily column. It could still happen, or come close. If it doesn’t, I just wanted you to know what’s going on with me.

Tags: Baseball Rules of 1888

This entry was posted on February 29, 2012 at 2:11 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.