Baseball game between two teams of nine players played with a bat, ball, and gloves on a diamond-shaped field with four white bases (i.e., a square oriented so that its diagonal line is vertical). When three players on the batting team are “put out,” the teams switch places and play offense as batters and defense as fielders. As hitters, players attempt to stir things up around town out of the scope of the handling group and make a total circuit around the bases for a “run.” The group that scores the most runs in nine innings (times at bat) dominates the match.
A national pastime
Many popular sports, including baseball, gridiron football, and basketball, are credited to the United States. Some of these sports have large fan bases and have been adopted internationally in varying degrees. However, despite the game’s global expansion and the growing influence of Asian and Latin American leagues and players, baseball remains the sport that Americans consider to be their “national pastime.” The game has been a part of American life and identity for a long time. More than a century ago, the poet Walt Whitman exclaimed, “That’s the main fact in connection with it: It’s our game.” America’s sport.” He proceeded to make sense of that baseball
Has the snap, go, hurl of the American climate — it has a place as a lot to our foundations, squeezes into them as fundamentally, as our constitutions, regulations: is just as significant in our history as a whole. It is the location where memories are formed.
It’s possible that Whitman overestimated baseball’s significance to and compatibility with American life, but few would argue that baseball has merely served as a simple pastime.
Many popular sports, including baseball, gridiron football, and basketball, are credited to the United States. Some of these sports have large fan bases and have been adopted internationally in varying degrees. However, despite the game’s global expansion and the growing influence of Asian and Latin American leagues and players, baseball remains the sport that Americans consider to be their “national pastime.” The game has been a part of American life and identity for a long time. More than a century ago, the poet Walt Whitman exclaimed, “That’s the main fact in connection with it: It’s our game.” America’s sport.” He proceeded to make sense of that baseball
Has the snap, go, hurl of the American climate — it has a place as a lot to our foundations, squeezes into them as fundamentally, as our constitutions, regulations: is just as significant in our history as a whole. It is the location where memories are formed.
It’s possible that Whitman overestimated baseball’s significance to and compatibility with American life, but few would argue that baseball has merely served as a simple pastime.
Additionally, baseball altered the nation’s calendar. With the ascent of industrialization, the normalized clock season of the workplace or production line denied individuals of the prior experience of time in its rich relationship with the sunlight hours, the regular rhythms of the seasons, and the conventional church schedule. However, for Americans, the start of the baseball training season meant spring, the start of the regular season meant summer, and the World Series meant fall. Baseball fans had “hot stove leagues” in the winter, where they talked about great players and games from the past and speculated about the upcoming season.
The World Series, which started in 1903 and pitted the winners of the American and National Leagues in a postseason play-off, quickly became one of the most popular holidays, along with Christmas and the Fourth of July. In 1911, Everybody’s Magazine declared that the series was “the very quintessence and consummation of the Most Perfect Thing in America.” It absorbed the entire nation each fall.
Because baseball is so deeply ingrained in everyday American conversation, phrases from baseball such as “He threw me a curve,” “Her presentation covered all the bases,” and “He’s really out in left field” quickly became part of the national vocabulary. The foreign press had difficulty translating President George H.W. Bush’s frequent use of baseball metaphors during his administration. Bush was a baseball player who attended Yale University. Baseball illustrations first appeared in periodicals in the 1850s, and popular illustrator Norman Rockwell frequently depicted baseball on the covers of The Saturday Evening Post in the 20th century. Casey at the Bat” and “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” stay among the most popular sonnets and tunes, separately, among Americans. Baseball themes have been used frequently by writers and filmmakers. After the mid-twentieth hundred years, at the very time baseball at the grassroots level had started a detectable plunge, baseball fiction multiplied. Baseball literature courses began to be offered at American universities, and baseball movies also became increasingly popular. In 1994 the Public Telecom Framework delivered Ken Consumes’ nostalgic Baseball, seemingly the most fantastic authentic TV narrative made.
Baseball’s history has been intertwined with and a reflection of major social and cultural divides, despite its enormous integrative capabilities. Evangelical Protestants from the middle class viewed the sport with a lot of skepticism up until the early 20th century. They associated ne’er-do-wells, immigrants, the working class, drinking, gambling, and general rowdiness with baseball, or at least the professional version of the game. On the other hand, these characteristics helped ethnic groups from the nation’s ghettos rise to prominence. In the 19th century, Irish and German Americans were so prominent in professional baseball that some observers wondered if they had a special capacity for playing the game. Although they typically encountered less discrimination in baseball (as well as in other venues of commercial entertainment) than they did in the more “respectable” occupations, they were still present.
Before racial segregation became the norm in the United States in the 1880s, Black players competed against white players in professional baseball. However, Blacks had to create their own baseball world after that. During their barnstorming tour of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean, dozens of Black teams faced off against local semiprofessional teams. The players, despite playing high-quality baseball, frequently engaged in various forms of clowning to appeal to spectators and perpetuate Black stereotypes. There were separate Black professional leagues, known as the Negro leagues, from the 1920s to the 1950s. However, in 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the long-standing color barrier in major league baseball. In the United States, baseball’s racial integration was very symbolic because it was the national game; In point of fact, it served as a forerunner to the 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka by the U.S. Supreme Court that brought an end to racial segregation in schools and ushered in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, a significant influx of Hispanics into professional baseball in the 1980s and 1990s reflected the country’s shifting ethnic composition.
In addition, baseball played a role in shaping American conceptions of gender roles. Even though women began playing baseball in the 1860s, the majority of their participation was limited to spectatorship. Baseball promoters made a concerted effort to encourage women to attend the game in order to combat the game’s reputation for disorder. According to the Baseball Chronicle, “repressing as it does, all the out-burst of intemperate language which the excitement of a contest so frequently induces,” the presence of a group of women “purifies the moral atmosphere of a baseball gathering.” The press frequently referred to women on barnstorming teams in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries as “Amazons,” “freaks,” or “frauds.” In 1943, during The Second Great War, when it was expected that proficient baseball may be compelled to shut down, the All-American Young ladies Proficient Baseball Association made its presentation. Subsequent to having given in excess of 600 ladies a valuable chance to play baseball and to engage a few million fans, the association collapsed in 1954.
Baseball, on the other hand, demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for fostering bonds, despite its inability to resolve conflicts that resulted from fundamental social divides. Young artisans and clerks conceived of themselves as members of what was referred to as the “base ball fraternity” in the 1850s because they were frequently relocated to the city and found that their way of life was rapidly changing in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. They wore distinctive uniforms, developed their own rituals, and, while playing baseball, shared powerful common experiences, just like the volunteer fire departments and militia units of the time. Additionally, participation in and attendance at baseball games strengthened occupational, ethnic, and racial identities. Baseball clubs were started by butchers, typeetters, draymen, bricklayers, and even clergy. African Americans, German Americans, and Irish Americans also did.
Urban identities were nourished and strengthened by professional baseball. “We can beat her in baseball if we are ahead of the big city [New York] in nothing else,” declared the Brooklyn Eagle in 1862. The emotions of the fans were invested in their professional representative nines. After the St. Louis (Missouri) Brown Stockings defeated the local White Stockings in 1875, a Chicago newspaper reported, “A deep gloom settled over the city.” Companions would not perceive companions, darlings became alienated, and business was suspended.” Indeed, even in the late twentieth 100 years, during a time more given to criticism, the triumphs and disappointments of expert groups kept on summoning overwhelming inclinations among nearby occupants. For instance, Cleveland experienced a significant civic revival in the 1990s, aided in part by the success of the Indians baseball team, following two decades of urban decay and demoralization.
Beyond the communities they represented, specific baseball teams and individual players had a significant impact. The St. Louis Cardinals emerged as the quintessential champions of the Midwest, of small towns and farms, of rural America with its simplicity, rusticity, and old-stock Protestant homogeneity, while the New York Yankees, who in the first half of the 20th century were the quintessential representatives of the big city, of the East, of urban America with its sophistication, of ethnic and religious heterogeneity, became synonymous with unparalleled success. During the 1920s Angel Ruth turned into the precious stone’s gigantic mythical being. To those working on sequential construction systems or sitting at their work areas in corporate administrations, Ruth typified America’s proceeding with confidence in vertical social versatility. His impressive home runs served as vivid evidence that individuals could still rise from impolite and vulgar beginnings to fame and fortune. For African Americans, Dark stars like Handbag Paige and Josh Gibson outfitted similarly convincing models of individual motivation and achievement.
Local civic monuments and archives of collective memories grew out of baseball parks. Between 1909 and 1923, approximately 15 major league clubs constructed new, more durable steel and concrete parks. The initial parks were flimsy, jerry-built wooden structures. These structures were likened to the incredible public structures, high rises, and rail route terminals of the day; They were proudly displayed by locals as evidence of their city’s size and accomplishments.
The owners of the first parks gave them pastoral names like “Ebbets Field,” “Sportsman’s Park,” and “The Polo Grounds” because they saw them as places to get away from the noise, dirt, and filth of the industrial city. However, when symmetrical multisports facilities were built in the 1960s and 1970s, urban and futuristic names like “Astrodome” and “Kingdome” took over. In another park-building period during the 1990s, creators tried to recover the vibe of prior times by planning “retro stops,” a term that was something of a confusing expression in that, while the new stops offered the fan the closeness of the bygone era parks, they at the same time gave current comforts, for example, elevators, environment controlled lounges, cutting edge varying media frameworks, Disneyesque play regions for youngsters, and space for various retail outlets. The park names Network Associates Stadium and Bank One Ballpark reflected the growing corporate influence on the game.
Around the middle of the 20th century, baseball’s claim to being America’s game was based on less secure ground than it had been in the past. The sport was severely challenged not only by other professional sports, particularly gridiron football, but also by the massive shift in American behavior from public to private, at-home activities. All levels of baseball saw a decline in attendance as a percentage of the population, the minor leagues became a shell of their former selves, and hundreds of semi-professional and amateur teams folded. During the 1990s, player strikes, free organization, abberations in rivalry, and the increasing expense of going to games added to the hardships of significant association baseball. However, baseball’s remarkable resilience persisted; By the end of the century, attendance at minor league games was close to World War II records, and attendance at professional games increased. Baseball still had a lot of problems when the 21st century started, but the sport was getting more popular all over the world, and it still has a special place in the hearts and minds of the people of the United States.
History
Origin
The children’s book A Little Pretty Pocket-Book by John Newbery, published in 1744, uses the term “base-ball.” A brief poem and an illustration of the game base-ball are included in the book. Curiously, the bases in the delineation are set apart by posts rather than the packs and level home plate now so natural in the game. The book was reprinted in North America in 1762 (in New York) and 1787 (in Massachusetts) due to its widespread popularity in England.
There are numerous additional early references to base-based bat-and-ball games: a British newspaper from 1749 that says that Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, was playing “Bass-Ball” in Surrey, England; playing at base” at the American armed force camp at Valley Produce in 1778; the prohibition of students “playing with balls and sticks” on Princeton College’s common in 1787; a note in the memoirs of Thurlow Weed, a politician and editor of a newspaper in upstate New York, about a baseball club that was formed around 1825; a newspaper report that in the 1820s, the Rochester (New York) Baseball Club held about 50 practices; and an account from the older Oliver Wendell Holmes about his time at Harvard in the late 1820s, in which he mentioned that he played a lot of ball at college.
A chapter on rounders was included in the second edition of The Boy’s Own Book (1828), a book about English sports that boys played at the time. Rounders, as described there, shared many similarities with the modern game of baseball: it was played on a jewel formed infield with a base at each corner, the fourth being that at which the player initially stood and to which he needed to progress to score a run. A batter could run when he hit a pitched ball through or over the infield. He was unable to run because a ball hit elsewhere was considered foul. Three missed strikes at the ball implied the player was out. The batter was struck out by a batted ball that flew by. When compared to baseball, rounders differ in that the fielder hits the runner out with the thrown ball when a ground-in ball is fielded. When a runner was caught stealing, the same thing happened. Flat stones are depicted as bases, and there is a second catcher behind the first, possibly to catch foul balls. Baseball seems to have come from rounders in a straight line. The principal American record of rounders was in The Book of Sports (1834) by Robin Carver, who credits The Kid’s Own Book as his source however calls the game base, or objective, ball.
Early years
Alexander J. Cartwright, a New York City amateur baseball player, is said to have founded the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in 1845. There, he formulated a set of baseball rules, many of which are still in effect. The rules were similar to those for rounders, with one major change: the runner was put out by being tagged with the ball, not by being hit by it. The use of a harder ball as a result of this change made it possible to play on a larger scale.
The Knickerbockers and other amateur club teams in the New York City area adopted these rules, which increased the game’s popularity. The old game with the delicate ball kept on being well known in and around Boston; The Knickerbocker or New York version of the game was not adopted until 1860 by a Philadelphia club that had been playing the old game since 1833. Until the American Nationwide conflict (1861-65), the two adaptations of the game were known as the Massachusetts game (utilizing the delicate ball) and the New York game (utilizing the hard ball). Soldiers from New York and New Jersey taught others their game during the Civil War, and after the war, the New York game took over.
The infield’s dimensions and weight, as well as the size and weight of the ball, were set in 1854 in a rule revision that has not been significantly modified since. In 1857, clubs from New York City and the surrounding area formed the National Association of Base Ball Players. A club was established in Washington, D.C., in 1859, and clubs were established in Lowell, Massachusetts, the following year; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; as well as Hartford, Connecticut The game kept on spreading after the Nationwide conflict — to Maine, Kentucky, and Oregon. The national pastime of baseball was on its way. Outside of the cities, it was played a lot, but the big-city clubs were the most popular. 91 amateur baseball teams from cities like St. Louis were gathered at a convention in 1865 to confirm baseball’s rules and amateur status; Nashville, Tennessee; Lexington, Kentucky; DC, Washington; Boston; Philadelphia and
Major league baseball
In the years following the Civil War, baseball underwent two significant transformations: the sport’s subsequent expansion into Asia and Latin America and its subsequent professionalization in the United States The New York Knickerbockers and other early baseball clubs were clubs in the truest sense of the word: individuals paid levy, the accentuation was on club and mingling, and ball games were played generally among individuals. However, the rise in baseball’s popularity soon sparked business interest. Brooklyn’s William Cammeyer built an enclosed baseball field with stands and a charge for admission in 1862. This practice quickly spread after the Civil War, and clubs quickly realized that tournaments and games with other clubs drew larger crowds and elevated the winners. Gamblers were interested in and influenced by the interclub games. Clubs were under pressure to field high-quality teams as a result of the increased emphasis on external competition. Field time was given to the best players of a club so they could practice, and players began to specialize in playing a single position. Professionalism first emerged around 1865–1866, when some teams began hiring skilled players per game. Players either were paid for playing or were repaid with occupations that expected practically no genuine work. The public at large was captivated by the intense competition and rivalries that emerged, while amateurs resented these practices as well as the gambling and bribery that frequently went along with them. The Cincinnati (Ohio) Red Stockings were the first all-professional team to be publicly announced in 1869; That year, it went on tour and played from New York City to San Francisco, winning 56 games and tying one. The group’s prosperity, particularly against the blessed clubs of New York, brought about public reputation and demonstrated the prevalent expertise of expert players. Although many players remained nominally in the amateur National Association of Base Ball Players until the amateurs withdrew in 1871, the desire of many other cities and teams to win such acclaim ensured the professionalization of the sport. After that, the sport’s growth was largely overseen by professional teams.
1871 saw the founding of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. The establishing groups were the Philadelphia Sports; the Chicago White Stockings, who played as the Chicago Orphans and Chicago Colts before becoming the Cubs; the American League Chicago White Sox were not established until 1900; the Brooklyn (New York) Eckfords; the Cleveland Forest Cities in Ohio; Rockford, Illinois’ Forest Cities; the Troy, New York, Haymakers; the Fort Wayne, Indiana, Kekiongas; Olympic Games held in Washington, D.C.; and the New York City Mutuals. With the establishment of the rival National League of Professional Baseball Clubs in 1876, the league was dissolved. Particularly significant was the transition from a players’ association to a club association. The groups making up the new association addressed Philadelphia, Hartford (Connecticut), Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville (Kentucky), St. Louis, and New York City. The reputation of baseball as an institution was significantly enhanced when William Hulbert, league president from 1877 to 1882, kicked out four players for dishonesty.
League formation
With teams from cities that were not members of the National League and teams that had been kicked out of the league (like Cincinnati, which was disciplined in 1880 for playing games on Sunday and allowing alcohol on the grounds), the American Association was formed in 1881. Players formed the Players’ League in 1890 after the National League attempted to limit pitchers’ salaries to $2,000, but it quickly failed. The National League was successfully challenged by the American Association, which merged with it in late 1891 to form a 12-team monopoly that lasted until 1899. By 1900 the Public Association had contracted to eight groups — Boston (the group that would ultimately turn into the Overcomes), Brooklyn (destined to be the Dodgers), Chicago (destined to be the Whelps), Cincinnati (the Reds, who had gotten back to the association in 1890), New York City (the Monsters), Philadelphia (the Phillies), Pittsburgh (the Privateers), and St. Louis (the Cardinals) — and it remained so comprised until 1953, when the Boston Conquers moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Midwesterners were a part of the 1893-founded Western League. The National League agreed to Charles Comiskey’s 1900 moves of his St. Paul (Minnesota) team to Chicago as the White Sox and his Grand Rapids (Michigan) team to Cleveland as the Indians. However, the National League refused to grant permission to establish teams in Baltimore (Maryland) and Washington, D.C., launching the “baseball war.” Teams from Indianapolis (Indiana), Kansas City (Missouri), Minneapolis (New York), and Buffalo (New York) were moved from the Western League, which was renamed the American League in 1901, to Baltimore (the first of two American League teams to be called the Baltimore Orioles), Washington, D.C. (the Senators), Philadelphia (the Athletics), and Boston (the Red Stockings). There were also American League teams in Detroit, Michigan (the Tigers) and Milwaukee, Wisconsin (the first of two teams to be called Milwaukee Brewers), the latter of which moved to St. Louis in 1902 as the Browns. The league continued in its current form until 1954, when the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles, when the Baltimore club moved to New York City to become the Highlanders (after 1912, the Yankees).
Many of the National League’s best players were lured away by the American League during the “war.” The leagues agreed in 1903 to prohibit the transfer of franchises from one city to another without the other league’s permission and the single ownership of two clubs in the same city. Additionally, they established guidelines for the integration of minor league players into major league teams and the transfer of players between leagues. With the exception of 1994, when a work stoppage forced the cancellation of the World Series, the winner was the team that won four games out of seven (five out of nine from 1919 to 1921) after the peace of 1903 resulted in the first World Series, which was held every year thereafter (with the exception of 1904, when the New York Giants refused to play, believing the opposition to be unworthy). The two leagues experienced a prolonged period of expansion in the years that followed the “war.” The “inside game” ruled for the next two decades, until hitter-friendly regulations were implemented in 1920, bringing about the “live-ball era” (also known as the “dead-ball era”). Pitching, speed, and batsmanship were emphasized in the inside game style of play. Hitting was exceptionally normal, and pairs and triples were more proclaimed than grand slams (which during this period were solely of within the-recreation area assortment). Two managers who brought success to their teams were credited with being masters of the inside game: Connie Mack, manager of the American League Philadelphia Athletics from 1901 to 1950, and John J. McGraw, manager of the National League New York Giants from 1902 to 32.
Survival and growth
When eight members of the Chicago White Sox were alleged to have accepted bribes from well-known gamblers in order to “throw” the 1919 World Series, baseball was the subject of a significant scandal that came to be known as the Black Sox scandal. The White Sox’s owner, Charles Comiskey, suspended the players for the 1921 season, but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict them. However, after becoming baseball’s first commissioner and replacing the three-person National Commission that had been established in 1903.3, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis banned the eight accused players from baseball for life, presumably out of a need to restore baseball’s honor.
Babe Ruth was the most popular hero in the United States during the 1920s, which are generally referred to as a “golden age” of sports. Ruth was a New York Yankee outfielder who was known as the “Sultan of Swat.” He was a big man with a big personality. He made the home run, the kind that went over the outfield wall, into a mythical feat that captivated the nation. His presentation guaranteed the progress of his group as well as prodded a strategic change in baseball. The era of free swinging at the plate replaced the inside game with its sacrifices and bunts. Fans flocked in large numbers to the ballparks as a result of the sudden uptick in offense. Except at the minor league and negro league levels, the game’s rise in popularity and financial success was little affected by the 1930s Great Depression. A number of recent innovations aided the game’s commercial expansion. In 1933, Comiskey Park in Chicago hosted the inaugural All-Star Game, an exhibition matchup between the best players from the American League and the National League. Radio broadcasts of games were also cautiously welcomed by club owners in the 1920s. In 1921, Pittsburgh hosted the first major league game to be broadcast, but only the Chicago Cubs allowed broadcasts of all of their games during that decade. Especially during the Great Depression, many owners were concerned that radio would discourage fans from attending the games in person. On the other hand, the opposite was true: radio made new fans and carried a greater amount of them to the ballpark. In 1935, Cincinnati became the first major league team to use night baseball, which had previously been played by minor league and barnstorming teams. At first mindfulness and custom eased back the interest in night baseball, yet the undeniable business advantages of playing when fans were not working at last won out. Night baseball was delayed by World War II until the 1960s, when all teams except the Cubs scheduled about half of their home games at night. Only in 1988 did the Cubs accept night baseball at home.) In 1971, the first World Series game was played at night.
From 1942 for the rest of The Second Great War, baseball worked under the “green light” request of Magistrate Landis, endorsed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Not long after the Pearl Harbor assault, Landis inquired as to whether he felt that baseball ought to “close down however long the conflict would last.” In a letter dated January 15, 1942, Roosevelt, a lifelong baseball fan, responded that he believed baseball was valuable to the nation and should continue throughout the war. As soon as Landis received this letter giving baseball the go-ahead, organized baseball joined the American war effort and advertised itself as “the national nerve tonic” for factory workers during the war. Even so, baseball game attendance was down slightly. In addition, a lot of players enlisted in the military, including Ted Williams, the last player in organized baseball to have a season batting average of more than.400 (.406 in 1941), which affected the level of play somewhat.
The ball and bat
The ball has a plug and-elastic center, around which yarn is firmly wrapped; Two pieces of white leather that have been sewed together to form the cover have a snug fit. The weight is between 5 and 5.25 ounces (142 and 149 grams), and the circumference is between 9 and 9.25 inches (23 and 23.5 cm). The bat is a smooth, rounded stick made of solid or laminated wood that is no longer than 42 inches (107 centimeters) long and no thicker than 2.75 inches (7 centimeters) at the barrel end. It then tapers to the handle end. However, the majority of the time, players in major league baseball prefer a bat that is no longer than 35 inches (89 cm) long and weighs no more than 30 ounces (850 grams).) The bat’s construction cannot include any metal or other reinforcement, and its weight is not restricted. However, aluminum bats are permitted for amateur players.) To enhance grip, the handle may be coated with tape or adhesive material, such as pine tar; however, in major league play, such materials may not be applied more than 18 inches (46 cm) from the handle’s tip.
Gloves
Baseball was initially played uncovered given. Catchers, who try to catch every pitch that isn’t hit, were the first to use gloves starting in 1860. Soon after, first basemen, who receive a lot of throws from infielders for putouts, adopted gloves. Leather is used to make all gloves, and some of them have padding. With the exception of a cleft between the thumb and index finger, the catcher’s mitt has a solid face and is thickly padded, except in the middle, where the pitched ball is caught. The glove can’t surpass 38 inches (96.5 cm) in circuit and 15.5 inches (39.4 cm) start to finish. The primary baseman’s glove is more slender and more adaptable, a strong spread of calfskin for the four fingers with a webbing interfacing the thumb and pointer. Leather straps connect the thumb and index finger on all other players’ finger gloves. The majority of batters now wear form-fitting batting gloves, which are intended to enhance grip.
Protective gear
The catcher wears a helmet, a barred mask with a hanging throat guard, a padded chest protector, and lightweight guards covering the knees, shins, and ankles. The umpire behind home plate wears a similar chest protector and mask. At bat players wear a lightweight plastic batting helmet that flares down over the ears to protect the temples. Groin protection is also worn by male players.
Umpires
The game is run by the umpires. Behind home plate, a person determines whether a batter has been hit by a pitch or has interfered with the catcher (or the other way around) and calls runners safe or out at home plate. They also call balls and strikes on the batter. He and the other three umpires, who are located close to first, second, and third bases, can call hit balls fair or foul (if they are within the foul lines); At the first three bases, the other three declare runners safe or out. A balk, an illegal pitching motion, can be called by any umpire. If an umpire is unable to see a play, he may request assistance from other umpires, and an appeal may be made to the first- or third-base umpire regarding whether a batter has taken a full swing for a strike call or checked his swing.
