I’m watching a Happy Days replay last night, and Ritchie Cunningham was on a game show, answering baseball questions. He found out that the answers were being fed to the contestants and he was insulted…said ‘I don’t need the answers, I can get them myself…Why, I know 6 ways to first base without getting a hit!’ I’ve come up with 4. Anyone know the other 2?
I don’t think the rules of baseball (as opposed to scoring rules) distinguish between hit, error and fielder’s choice. Here are the six as I understand it:
Since catcher’s interference is scored as an error (although a special category of error, because it does not count as a time at bat for the batter), one could argue that these two categories are redundant. The question often is posed as “five ways to get to first base without hitting the ball”, in which case catcher’s interference is a distinct category because it is the only type of error which can accomplish that feat.
Hit and fielder’s choice are scored differently. FC does not increase the batter’s batting average, since if there had been no one on base he would have been out. All the ways of getting to 1st on a dropped 3rd strike are counted as the same thing, though.
However, all the flavors of getting on base through a dropped third strike do show that you can reach first base on an error without hitting the ball and without the error necessarily being catcher’s interference.