this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
398 points (96.9% liked)

Microblog Memes

5778 readers
2163 users here now

A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.

Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.

Rules:

  1. Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
  2. Be nice.
  3. No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
  4. Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.

Related communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 3 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Now sometimes a pitcher may choose to “walk” a player by throwing 4 balls; pitchers may do this on purpose if they feel the batter could hit a home run)

Could you explain that bit? The rest I get. Is a pitcher "throwing" a ball basically them deliberately pitching poorly so the batter can't hit it?

[–] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes. When the pitcher and catcher want to intentionally walk a batter, the catcher will extend their glove hand all the way to their side, which is outside of the batter’s reach, and the pitcher will throw it to the catcher’s glove.

[–] deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Not having a ball in the game, per se, that seems like it should be illegal.

Though there's an infamous "underarm bowling incident" in Australian/New Zealand test cricket that's similar, was legal, but scandalous.

[–] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

Eh. It’s part of the game. I believe it’s always been this way.

[–] Maven@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yes that's exactly what's happening

Yes. Its part of the penalty system. If the batter fails to hit a ball that they could have hit, they get a strike, and they get three strikes before they have to go to the back of the line and let the next batter swing: if 3 batters strike out, the teams switch. If the pitcher throws so poorly that the batter would not have been able to hit the ball without lunging for it, the pitcher gets a "ball". Four balls means the batter walks to first base (and everyone else walks to the next base). Unlike batting, pitchers do not rotate when they accumulate three balls, because pitching is so physically demanding that switching them out is already a regular process.