They seem arbitrarily in favor of the team at bat. What are they point of these two rules? Dumb it down because I know very little about baseball.
Not necessarily. Found this.
http://www.eteamz.com/baseball/rules/obr/library/rule.cfm/Dropped%20Third%20Strike/
This would also obtain for the other situation–you’d have another runner and another chance for an out.
Column in question.
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_299.html
Still, why the rule at all?
Kid,
Because the catcher is making the putout, and if he drops it, he can’t. Similar to the firstbaseman dropping the ball – the out doesn’t happen if the catcher doesn’t hang on to it.
Cordially,
Sky
Ok, I’ll buy that. The umpire thing still seems odd.
(This is a WAG, but it’s from a baseball fan who’s spent some time thinking about this issue.)
The umpire bit probably came up in play before the rule was made. Think about it: You’re playing baseball, the ball gets lodged in the umpire’s mask or other gear. What do you do?
You can’t call it an out, you can’t call it a home run, and you can’t call it “in play” because the catcher would attack the ump trying to get the ball. One base seems like a fair enough solution, since it’s the defensive team’s fault the ball is there in the first place.
That’s my best guess, which will no doubt be corrected shortly.
Re: The Force Rule
So why wouldn’t a team that had allowed the bases to be loaded with one out simply drop a third strike on the batter, pick it up, step on home plate and snap throw to third? Two outs, inning over. I can’t believe there’s not something that prevents this…
The “one base on dropped third strike” rule only applies if there’s no one on first already.
On a dropped third strike, the batter is out if first is occupied unless there are two outs.
Sorry, not only was that last post very unclear, I didn’t even mention that it was in response to grem0517’s question. Let’s try this again:
If first base is occupied and there are less than two outs, then the batter is out regardless of whether the third strike was caught or not. This prevents your scenario from taking place.
Rysto and jackelope
Thanks for the clarification! Somehow I missed the two out caveat on the rule interpretation posted by DDG.
Also the dropped third strike rule has been part of baseball for a long time. It’s been a feature of baseball since its inception, if you can figure out just when “baseball” started.
In baseball’s early days, it was not a given that the catcher would hold on to the third strike. Especially since the catcher wasn’t wearing a glove and was standing several feet behind the batter.
Cecil revisited this question in this column. I’m surprised that they posted the old, now obsolete, version of the column.
The dropped third strike rule is easy to understand if one looks at the original Knickerbocker rules from 1845 (generally considered the first written rules of baseball). Here is the relevant rule:
11TH. Three balls being struck at and missed and the last one caught, is a hand-out; if not caught is considered fair, and the striker bound to run.
If one goes back far enough in history, there were no strikes - the pitcher would keep pitching to the same batter until the batter put the ball in play. Swinging strikes were added to speed up the game, and called strikes and balls were added later (also to speed up the game). The idea was to force the batter to swing and hit good pitches, and to force the pitcher to throw good pitches.
In the days before gloves, the catcher would stand far behind the batter and catch the pitch on the bounce. With the 11th Knickerbocker rule, if the catcher caught the ball before it bounced it would be like catching a fly ball, and the batter would be out. When the catcher moved up close to the batter, almost all third strikes were caught before they bounced.
As others have noted, there is an exception to the dropped third strike rule when first base is occupied and there are fewer than two outs. This exception is to keep the catcher from getting an easy double play by deliberately dropping the ball. It’s similar to the infield fly rule.
The dropped third strike rule could be eliminated without changing the game much, but it’s been part of baseball for a long time, and no one seems to mind.