http://youtube.com/watch?v=xrM5PITsn7Q

2. There aren’t switch pitchers because it’s fantastically hard to become Major League caliber pitching with just ONE hand. However, the New York Yankees did select a guy in the draft that pitches with both hands. As far as I know, he’s the only switch pitcher in baseball.

7. The infield fly rule is called when there are less than 2 outs and a possible force out at third base (ie runners on 1st and 2nd, or bases loaded). It’s called when the batter hits a fly ball that an infielder can easily catch. The batter is automatically out, whether the fielder makes the catch or not. It’s called by the umpire, and the intention is to prevent fielders from intentionally dropping the fly ball and then getting a double play.

Why doesn’t a LH batter run to third instead of first?

Because there need to be two defensive players on each side of the infield (because both sides are the same size). With only three bases, you need to come up with a name for the fourth position.

Because there weren’t fences originally (fans sat in the deep outfield, but the ball was still live), so you’d actually have to run all the way to home.

From Wikipedia (so who knows if it’s true)

The Oxford English Dictionary states that the origins are uncertain, but that perhaps it is a corruption of the word recruit. The earliest example from the OED is from Rudyard Kipling’s Barrack-Room Ballads (published 1892): So ‘ark an’ ‘eed, you rookies, which is always grumblin’ sore, referring to rookies in the sense of raw recruits to the British Army.[2]

A common urban legend suggests that the term derives from the game of chess; the “rook” in chess is often the last piece to be introduced into gameplay. This would appear to be consistent with the definition of “rookie”. However, there are no known citations that prove or disprove this explanation.

Gloves developed slowly in baseball. First because catching a baseball hurts and later because it allowed players to catch fly balls (previously they’d regularly let them drop). Finally, they caught on because they made people play better:

Bid McPhee as very stubborn but a standout in baseball. Finally in 1896, he caved in and got the glove, thus drastically reducing his forty five error season down to only fifteen.

1- mostly because the 2B is specially trained to make what is called “the pivot,” which is a quick catch, followed by a spin to orient hisself towards first base, followed by a throw. Oftentimes, a speeding baserunner is trying to hurtle his body into the second baseman, in order to make the second baseman fail to complete the throw to first.

The pivot only comes into play on ground balls to the infield with a runner on first and one or less outs, but since making “double plays” is a highly important defensive weapon, and the pivot is almost always done by the second baseman, it makes sense to specialize and not to switch around.

2. There are switch pitchers, but they are rare. Greg Harris is, I believe, the only major league example. Pat Venditte, in the Yankees’ minor league system, is also a switch pitcher.

3. Baseball started out in its’ early years with a lot of fluctuations and variances in its’ rules. Eventually, amateur teams grew into professional teams and professional teams grew into leagues, and rules became more uniform, eventually evolved into what we know as the modern game today. The best way to answer this question is to imagine a world where MCC never existed, and cricket players mostly came from working classes, and started to use gloves as a way to gain advantage in the field. When the officials kindly asked them to remove their gloves, the players responded in kind by spitting tobacco juice in the officials’ eyes and threatening their personage. Of course, the officials backing down in fear, and eventually all the players started wearing gloves, and the rules were adapted to allow fielders’ gloves, and the game evolved so.

4 & 5. A shortstop (formerly called “short stop”) used to play shallow center field, while the three regular outfielders played deeper. Back in the days when there were no fences, it was necessary to keep line drives and hard grounders from getting between the outfielders, because the ball would keep on going, and the batter/runner would most likely be able to run around all of the bases, getting a “home run.” Yes, back in the day, “home run” implied a hard, brisk, well-earned trip around the bases after hitting a ball between the outfielders.

These days, with not only fences, but fences well within the range of long fly balls that clear them,(today’s “Home Run”) the outfielders don’t need to play nearly as deeply, and it is most efficient to use the shortstop as a counterbalance to the second baseman on the other side of second base. This has been so for well over a hundred years.

6. “Rookie” is an artistic license on the word “recruit” used by Rudyard Kipling that has since come into common usage in sport to mean someone in his first year at a particular level.

7. The umpire calls an infield fly when there is a runner on first, or runners on first and second, and less than two outs, and the batter hits a pop fly to the infield. The batter is called automatically out, and the play ends. The reason for this play is that over a hundred years ago, some ingenious players got the idea to drop easy fly balls to the infield and pick them up to start easy double plays. The only remedy to this stratagem is to send the runners when the ball is hit in the air. Yet, if the runner(s) are started, the fielders can elect to catch the ball, trapping the runner(s) off base, and making it easy to start a double play (Google “tagging up” if you need an explanation of this concept. Since the runner(s) in this situation were pretty much damned if they ran and damned if they stayed put, the “infield fly rule” was put into place to eliminate this situation altogether.

Now here’s one for you?

How come googly bowlers are going out of fashion? I would think that googly bowlers would draw many more Leg-Before-Wickets than other type of bowlers, due to the action on their throws (note to everyone else: a googly bowler is the cricket equivalent of a pitcher that throws a hard slider and a wicked screwball… big action in both directions)...

How come Australia and England didn’t get into a punch-up during the Bodyline incident? If something like that had happened in baseball, benches would have been cleared and there would have been a pile of bodies on the middle of the field? (note to everyone else: the Bodyline incident was a strategy of throwing every pitch directly at the batter. Yes, every pitch was a purpose pitch. Every pitch was a potential beanball, because in cricket, bowlers usually bounce the ball off the ground before it gets into the hitting area)

Good luck…

its much, much easier to play the game knowing where you will be playing, and what you have to do, than to keep track of who is batting and where on the field you are supposed to be playing every time a new batter comes up to bat.

Shortstops and Second Baseman generally know how to play each other’s position (or at least, the Second Baseman usually does, as he is generally a converted Short Stop). But the Shortstop usually has a much better arm, and usually better range. With the Left Handed Batter up, it would be perhaps even more important for the regular Short Stop to be at Short Stop, because the Left Handed batter would be getting a better break out of the batters box to first, and the throw from Short is longer than the throw from Second, thus a Stronger, more accurate arm is needed.

Mark Ellis would make a good SS, and did when he played there before being moved to Second Base, but for a collision with Bobby Crosby that almost tore his arm off. That is why he could never go back to playing Short Stop-he doesn’t have the arm stregnth anymore.

The same, however, is not true of Third Base, as the Third Baseman usually plays much shallower than the Middle Infielders, and has to rely more on reaction time than range. Having a strong arm helps quite a bit, but is not quite as important as at Short Stop, which is why you see a lot of players who can’t play Short Stop shuttle between 2B and 3B, with 2B being the more premium position.

might be able to shed some light on the glove question, because the gloves they’re playing with really are gloves, with no webbing and little reinforcement. I remember he said a co-worker of his who played cricket gave him some advice about how to catch fly balls without webbed gloves.

A long time ago I read this book about cricket. It was very good, but I’m afraid the main thing I remember from it is that in women’s cricket, the cups are informally referred to as “manhole covers”.

(yes, monkeyball, I’m giving you a batting practice fastball here…)

Although the 2B and SS wouldn’t switch positions (due to arm strength and the 2B’s ability to turn a double-play), it’s become more common for infielders to play in exaggerated shifts for LH hitters who pull the ball all the time. This started when Lou Boudreau, the SS-manager of the Cleveland Indians, invented the Williams Shift to deal with Red Sox slugger Ted Williams. It’s now common for LH power hitters (like the A’s’ Jack Cust) to face an infield with the SS, 2B and 1B all playing on the right side of second (usually the 2B is in shallow RF), and the 3B covering the entire left side of the infield, playing in a usual SS spot.

One thing to remember is that cricket positions are places on the field, whereas baseball positions are jobs assigned to individual players. That is, any fielder who plays at cover or wherever is playing at cover—but if a team shifts the infield, the SS is still the SS, even if he’s on the “wrong” side of second base, and the 2B is still the 2B, even if he’s playing 30 feet onto the outfield grass. Another way to put it is that every baseball position is conceptually equivalent to wicketkeeper (who is the wicketkeeper no matter where exactly he positions himself for a particular batsman).

Incidentally, infielders used to play much closer to the bases they cover—even early 20th century fielding statistics are messy to compare because some veteran 2Bs would take every throw at second base, leading (in the days when there were lots of stolen bases) to astronomical putout stats for 2Bs.

Why aren’t cricket balls red any more?

On “Top Gear” they keep refering to “saloons.” Is that what Americans would call a sedan? I also like how they rhyme coupe with toupee whereas we would rhyme it with stoop.