Q about baseball pitching from a cricket fan

[Novelty_Bobble]

@Jeff_Lichtman

By the way, baseball is a very different game from rounders. Rounders has no balls and strikes (and accordingly, no bases on balls). There’s no tag-up rule in rounders (in baseball, all baserunners must retouch their bases after a fly ball is caught). In rounders, there’s no such thing as tagging a runner out, and there’s no distinction between a force play and a non-force play. There’s no such thing as a stolen base in rounders. Baseball is a much harder and subtler game than rounders.

Compared to cricket rounders is very much more similar to baseball (but yes, a simplified version of it). At school we did play rounders with balls and strikes and tagging of runners and stealing bases were very much a thing. The only thing I don’t recognise is the “force-play”.

My point being that they are similar enough that most UK kids will get a feeling for the basics of baseball much more readily than a USA kid would have any knowledge of cricket.

[Chronos]

But speaking as someone who grew up in a nation saturated with baseball, and who’s only encountered cricket tangentially, I have to say that cricket still seems to make more sense to me.

[Telemark]

@Chronos

Ideally, I suppose, if your roster is stable enough for a long enough period of time, you’d want a fence that’s just a little bit closer than what your players can consistently hit to.

Such as Williamsburg at Fenway Park, although it’s not clear if it was such an explicit decision to benefit Ted Williams.

New Bullpens Installed at Fenway Park in 1940, 'Williamsburg' is Born - NESN.com

After a remarkable rookie season, Ted Williams did not ask for, nor did the lefty need, any help to boost his already stellar hitting numbers. But in 1940 he got it anyway when bullpens were installed in front of Fenway Park’s bleachers, moving in the right-field fence approximately 20 feet. Although the move did not immediately pay dividends for “the greatest hitter who ever lived,” (he only hit 23 homers in '40) the bullpen area eventually became known as “Williamsburg” because of the ease with which he could belt bombs there.

[ElvisL1ves]

The most notorious example is the short porch in right field at the old Yankee Stadium, “The House that Ruth Built”, made to inflate the Babe’s home run totals.

[zimaane]

There’s also variation in the distance to the back fence, though that’s not something you change from one game to the next. A hit that goes over the back fence in fair territory is a home run, which scores for the batter and for anyone who happens to be on base at the time (it’s theoretically possible to get an “inside-the-park” homer, but that’s very rare at the pro level). Ideally, I suppose, if your roster is stable enough for a long enough period of time, you’d want a fence that’s just a little bit closer than what your players can consistently hit to. But there’s a lot of variation in hit distances.

Teams that play in small ball parks like Wrigley field in Chicago (which also tends to have a favorable wind) will adopt a power hitting strategy, trying to get home runs often. Teams that play in larger parks will adopt a strategy based on speedy baserunners, as it is hard to hit home runs in their park.

This is less true than it used to be, imho, as it seems all teams have shifted to a power hitting strategy.

[ElvisL1ves]

In some parks that were notoriously pitcher-friendly, walls have been moved in to enable more crowd-pleasing homers - Detroit and Houston come to mind, and the new version of Yankee Stadium counts too.

[Novelty_Bobble]

@Chronos

But speaking as someone who grew up in a nation saturated with baseball, and who’s only encountered cricket tangentially, I have to say that cricket still seems to make more sense to me.

Clearly that British Empire DNA still runs strong!

Don’t fight it, give in to the sound of leather on willow.

[ElvisL1ves]

Bah. How hard is it to make contact when you’re batting with a canoe paddle?

[Novelty_Bobble]

@ElvisL1ves

Bah. How hard is it to make contact when you’re batting with a canoe paddle?

Well sometimes it is a problem when the players are trying to get the bat out of the way of the ball and it edges to a fielder. If the bat was thinner it may well miss completely! (and a cricket bat is less than two inches wider than a baseball bat)

But no, making contact in cricket is pretty easy in general (but not always), the real skill is making the choice when to leave, when to hit, how to hit and *where *to hit.

[Telemark]

@ElvisL1ves

and the new version of Yankee Stadium counts too.

The new stadium field has the exact same dimensions as the old one - Official New York Yankees Website | MLB.com