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Early forms of baseball or rounders from the mid 19th century did not require a fixed batting order; any player who was not on base could be called upon to bat. [6] The concept of a set batting order is said to have been invented by Alexander Cartwright, who also instituted rules such as the foul ball and tagging the runner (as opposed to pegging him with the ball), and devised the shortstop ...
The player currently batting in a game is said to be at the plate, at bat, or up to bat (shortened to up). To keep the game moving at an orderly pace, the next batter due up waits to take his turn in a circle (actually marked or imaginary) between his team's dugout or bench and the batter's box , and is said to be on deck , with the circle ...
The ultimate goal of the team at bat is to score runs. To accomplish this task, the team at bat successively (in a predetermined order called a lineup or batting order) sends its nine players to the batter's box (adjacent to home plate) where they become batters. (Each team sets its batting lineup at the beginning of the game.
Use of the DH is optional, but must be determined before the start of the game. If a team does not begin a game with a DH, the team's pitchers (or pinch hitters) must bat for the entire game. [7] The designated hitter can be moved to a fielding position during the game.
The bat is a hitting tool, traditionally made of a single, solid piece of wood. Other materials are now commonly used for nonprofessional games. It is a hard round stick, about 2.5 inches (6.4 centimeters) in diameter at the hitting end, tapering to a narrower handle and culminating in a knob.
In most bat species, females carry and give birth to a single pup per litter. [241] At birth, a bat pup can be up to 40 percent of the mother's weight, [48] and the pelvic girdle of the female can expand during birth as the two-halves are connected by a flexible ligament. [242]
At any time, the proper batter is simply the player whose name follows the previous actual batter in the written batting order (at the start of the game, the #1 hitter is the proper batter, and in subsequent innings, the leadoff proper batter is the one who follows the last batter to complete a plate appearance in the last previous inning).
The game evolved from older bat-and-ball games already being played in England by the mid-18th century. These games were taken to North America by immigrants, where the modern version developed . By the late 19th century, baseball was widely recognized as the national sport of the United States, and had begun to spread throughout the Pacific ...