Matthew Silverman - Baseball Miscellany: Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Baseball

G o to any baseball game, be it Little League, Pony League, International League, or American League, and the team stepping up to the plate first is the visiting team. Asking which team is in the field as a game starts is one of those questions that anyone knowing anything about baseball would not ask. Why does the visiting team bat first? Well, thats a good question.

It is seen as a tactical advantage for a team to have last licksthe chance to score in the bottom of the final inning and not have to defend in the field if they take the lead. The same is true if the game goes extra innings. Records show that the home team has about a 51 percent chance of winning in extra inningscompared with 54 percent in regulation. Still, the idea that the home team could win at any moment in bonus time has kept many people in their seats even after beer and hot dog sales have been shut off at the ballyard.

Yet it has not always been this way. Visiting teams have not always batted first and have enjoyed this home-field advantage even while wearing the visiting gray. The home team long held the option to bat first or second. If there hadnt been a formal rule put in the books in the 1950s, one gets the feeling that Tony LaRussas teams would bat first at home... with the pitcher hitting eighth.

Back in the day, LaRussa might have had a point. Before 1920 only a handful of baseballsand sometimes just a single ballmade it into a pitchers hand over the course of a game. (The death of Clevelands Ray Chapman after being hit in the head by a pitch from Yankee Carl Mays on August 16 of that year led to umpires being instructed to put new ballswhich are whiter and thus easier for the batter to seeinto play more often.)

When fewer balls were used, the team leading off had the first chance to hit with the new ball. If that team had the lead, it had the benefit of a completely darkened and beat-up ball to pitch with by the time the last of the ninth inning came around.

Though sometimes the home team batted first more for promotional than strategic considerations, the reason why two American League home teams opened the 1903 season as visitors has been lost to time. The Washington Senators led off at home in the first game played by the team now known as the New York Yankees (who had just relocated from Baltimore). Ironically, visiting New York, then known as the Highlanders, scored first while batting second, yet they did not cross the plate again versus Al Orth, who earned the 31 win over Jack Chesbro. That same day, the St. Louis Browns batted first against the Chicago White Sox in chilly St. Louis. It didnt do much for the home club as Chicago romped, 144. The next day both the Senators and Browns reverted to type and let the visiting team bat first; in both cases the visiting team won. The Senators and Browns are probably not great examples of strategy since they both finished far off the pace in 1903.

Around the Horn

Around the horn has two meanings, though both describe whipping the ball quickly around the infield. There is the around the horn double play, from third baseman to second baseman to first baseman (543 for those scoring at home). The other around the horn is more relaxed, though it also involves sharp throws; the ball is thrown around the horn after the first or second out if nobody is on base (the shortstop is usually included in the latter version and the first baseman is left out, presumably because he handles the ball more frequently and doesnt need the mid-inning practice). The term refers to sailors going around the tip of South America at Cape Horn to travel from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because of quickly arising storms, it was an often perilous journey; travel between the two oceans became far saferand shorterwith the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914.

For a more recent example, look no further than June 2527, 2010, to an interleague series between the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies. Originally scheduled for Toronto, it was moved to Citizens Bank Ballpark in Philly because of the G-20 Summit in Toronto, the fourth meeting of the Group of 20 (finance ministers and central bank governors from nineteen countries plus the European Union). With more than 11,000 uniformed police officers, security, and military personnel on duty in Torontoa total higher than the attendance at eight Blue Jays home games at the Rogers Centre in 2010authorities decided it best if the Jays made themselves scarce that weekend rather than create even more areas to monitor. The games could have been relocated to any number of neutral sites (the New York Mets and Florida Marlins, for example, would play three games the following week in San Juan to further enthusiasm for the game in Puerto Rico). The Blue Jays, however, opted to give the weekend games to Philadelphia instead, where they would likely sell out and the Blue Jays would enjoy a nice slice of revenue.

The first time the Arizona Diamondbacks got to bat firstor wear road grayswas in Los Angeles on April 7, 1998. Clad in white at home, the Dodgers and the battery of Chan Ho Park and Mike Piazza were unkind hosts in a 9-1 victory.

PHOTO CREDIT : JERRY REUSS

Did You Know?

Kekiongas Kick Off

The first game in the first professional league was won by the Fort Wayne Kekiongas in Indiana on May 4, 1871. Fort Waynes Bobby Mathews blanked the Forest City club of Cleveland 20 in the debut of the National Association. The National Association existed for five often precarious seasons before the National League took its place in 1876. While the NA laid the groundwork for professional baseball on a league-wide basis, the NL is considered the first major league.