[閒聊] Why is a game 9 innings?
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Why is a game 9 innings?
These are the backstories behind baseball's iconic rules.
為什麼一場比賽是九局?以下是棒球代表性規則的背後故事。
By Chris Landers
For decades, baseball has remained such a constant that its rules and
structure have become as cherished as its greatest players. The run-scoring
environment might have changed a bit since 1905, but the fundamental look and
feel of the game hasn't. Legendary sportswriter and Spink Award winner Red
Smith, as always, said it best: "Ninety feet between bases is perhaps as
close as man has ever come to perfection."
But, while Red certainly had a point, the story behind that perfection was
less divine intervention than a whole lot of trial and error. So, how did
baseball get here? Why are there four balls and three strikes, anyway? You
have questions, we have answers.
Why do pitchers throw overhand?
Chad Bradfords of the world aside, baseball history has been written by men
throwing overhand. But it wasn't always this way: For decades, every pitcher
had to throw with their arm directly perpendicular to the ground, as you can
make out in this illustration of a game from the 1860s:
(Incidentally, this is also why they're referred to as "pitchers" -- they
pitched the ball in the traditional sense of the term, with a stiff
underhanded motion, almost like tossing a horseshoe.)
If that sounds like a pretty easy time for hitters, well, that was the point.
Baseball evolved from other stick and ball games like cricket, so, like in
those games, pitchers weren't originally intended to be in opposition to the
batter. Their purpose was simple: Offer the ball up in a hittable position
and get out of the way. Presumably tired of getting shelled year after year,
pitchers like Tommy Bond started pushing the envelope inch by inch, creating
greater speed and movement with essentially sidearm deliveries -- until, in
1872, the perpendicular rule was relaxed to allow for greater range of motion.
At that point, all bets were off: Pitchers -- recognizing that they could
throw harder, locate better and throw more ferocious breaking balls -- began
to creep their release point all the way up to a three-quarters arm slot by
the early 1880s. Finally, in 1884, Cincinnati Red Stockings boss and "Father
of Professional Baseball" Harry Wright made it official: Pitchers could
deliver the ball any way they wanted. The move fundamentally changed the
relationship to the batter, and changed much of the game with it -- from the
rule stipulating that batters could dictate where the pitch was thrown to the
function of balls and strikes. Speaking of which ...
Why are batters given four balls and three strikes?
"Three strikes you're out" has been a foundational rule of baseball since the
very beginning -- it was even codified in the 1845 Knickerbocker Rules,
thought to be some of the very first written rules of the game. For
everything else, though, it's been a long and winding road.
Again, baseball's primary objective in the mid-19th century was to let
batters put the ball in play as much as possible. So, naturally, those
batters were given plenty of chances to make that happen. And we do mean
plenty: Initially, called strikes didn't even exist, and when they were
instituted in 1858, they came with caveats -- the first pitch couldn't be a
called strike, and umpires were required to warn each batter that a certain
pitch would be called a strike in the future.
[Game show voice] But that's not all! The idea of a "ball" didn't yet exist,
either, so eventually pitchers recognized that they could continue to deliver
pitches well wide of the plate and wait for the batter to get impatient. As
you might imagine, this created some, uh, pretty drastic pace of play
concerns: Batters, free to wait for the perfect pitch, would see up to 40-50
pitches per at-bat -- in one 1860 game between the Brooklyn Atlantics and the
Brooklyn Excelsiors, 665 pitches were thrown ... over three innings.
Games were routinely called due to lack of daylight, so, in 1863, called
balls were instituted. Even when the concept was introduced, though, it was
slowly and tentatively: Only every third "unfair" pitch was called a ball,
meaning a batter could only walk after nine (!) pitches outside of the strike
zone.
As run-scoring declined and pitchers began to do more than just feed batters,
the rule was frequently adjusted -- first to eight balls, then to seven, then
to six and so on, until in 1889, the league settled on four.
Why nine innings (and why nine men in a lineup)?
In baseball's infancy, not only was it a game without a clock, but it was
also a game without a set number of innings. Instead, teams played until one
of them scored 21 aces -- the 19th century equivalent of a run.
This wasn't a problem at first, in an age in which scoring runs was pretty
commonplace -- games lasted an average of only six innings in the 1840s, and
featured scores as high as 60-100 combined runs. A problem was brewing,
though: As skill levels increased and pitching caught up to hitting, those 21
aces were harder and harder to come by. After an 1856 game ended in a 12-12
tie on account of darkness, it was clear that a change needed to be made.
Enter Alexander Cartwright, founder of the Knickerbocker Club and definitely
not a real fireman:
That begged the question: Exactly how many innings was the right amount? At
that point, the Knickerbockers were torn between seven or nine men to a side
-- it all depended on how many were available that day -- and for
consistency's sake, the number of players dictated the number of innings
played. Alas, this couldn't be decided without some good old-fashioned
squabbling. From MLB official historian John Thorn:
In an 1856 Knickerbocker meeting, [two members] backed a motion to permit
nonmembers to take part in intramural games if fewer than eighteen Knicks
were present ... Duncan F. Curry countermoved that if fourteen Knickerbockers
were available, the game should admit no outsiders and be played shorthanded,
as had been their practice since 1845.
Sensing that an official ruling was necessary as more and more baseball teams
were formed, the Knickerbockers decided to form a committee in 1856 to tackle
the issue. The desire for more competitive defense won out, and nine innings
-- and nine men -- became the standard for good.
Why 162 games?
Initially, baseball's scheduling was simple: In 1920, the American and
National Leagues both had eight teams, and each team would play its league
rival 22 times, giving us the 154-game slate that would last for four
decades.
And then expansion happened. In 1961, the AL added the Los Angeles Angels and
Washington Senators. The next year, the NL welcomed the New York Mets and the
Houston Colt .45s. (Yes, this did lead to one year in which the AL's schedule
was slightly longer -- they both covered the same number of days, but the NL
got more days off.) Suddenly, the simple math was slightly more complicated:
Each team playing every other team in the league 22 times would have resulted
in an untenable 198-game schedule.
So, MLB cut it to 18 games against each league rival, and 162 games was born.
But, while that number has endured, it hasn't been without some controversy
as further expansions made the calculation a bit trickier: 76 games within
the same division, 66 against non-divisional league opponents and 20
Interleague games. A bit involved? Sure. But, as Thorn explained to Mental
Floss back in 2014, good luck changing it: "Baseball is a religion. It
becomes the 11th commandment: 162 games."
How did home plate get its shape?
Believe it or not, home plate wasn't always the square-triangle hybrid we
know today. Until the turn of the 20th century, games used just about any
object teams could find, be it made of metal, marble or even glass. The only
thing that mattered was the shape: Home plate had to be circular.
As you may have already guessed, this posed a problem: Imagine sliding into
home, only to find your leg scraped or sliced by a piece of rock. (Robert
Keating, the man who patented the design for the rubber, even complained that
tapping one's bat on home would "jar the batter's hands".) So, in the 1880s,
changes were made. The National League mandated a rubber or marble plate in
1885, and in 1887, home plate was transformed into a 12 inch-by-12 inch
square -- in line with the other three bases.
This posed difficulties of its own, though -- it was awfully hard to tell
whether or not a ball caught the corner when the corner was as small as a
single point. The solution? Create a base that was a forward-facing square in
the front, to allow for a longer line demarcating the strike zone, while
maintaining the diamond look at the back.
Why is it 60 feet, six inches to home?
If you think Aroldis Chapman is impressive now, consider: If Chapman had
pitched back in 1888, when the mound was just 50 feet away from home plate,
he likely would have been clocked at around 125 mph.
For much of the game's early history, the distance from pitcher to home plate
was a fuzzy concept -- the Knickerbocker Rules didn't settle on a fixed
distance, and by the 1870s, pitchers simply had to stay within a box whose
front edge was 45 feet from the front of home plate (again, similar to
cricket, though the pitcher wasn't allowed a running start).
This worked for a while ... until pitchers began to move beyond the simple
underhand delivery. In 1880, Lee Richmond tossed the first perfect game in
Major League history, and John Ward followed up with one of his own just five
days later. The two games -- along with the fact that the National League ERA
that year was an absurd 2.93 -- sent shockwaves through professional baseball
... and not simply because of Ward's Snidely Whiplash facial hair.
Over the next few years, pitching moved closer to what we know today. Looking
to goose offense, the front of the pitcher's box was moved back to 50 feet
away, and by 1887 -- with overhand deliveries now the law of the league --
pitchers were required to start their delivery with their feet 55.5 feet
from home.
Desperate for some offense with fan attendance on the decline, the Senior
Circuit moved the box back one more time. They settled on five more feet --
pushing the pitcher's starting point back to 60 feet, six inches.
--
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※ 編輯: ug945 (1.162.126.33), 01/05/2017 01:31:41
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