Little known fact about me: I'm a certified baseball umpire. I know it's an alien sport to most of you, so ask me anything you want to know about baseball rules and I'll do my best to explain why it is like that.

I'll start with: is the baseball game that capt Sisko and the DS9 crew play against vulcans accurate? The answer is yes, for the most part, except Odo's positioning behind the plate is all wrong. He sets up on the other side of the catcher, in the area where he's much more likely to get hit by a foul ball off the batter's bat. Normally, you work the "slot" between the batter and the catcher. But the rules in the match are called accurately -- anyone physically touching the umpire gets tossed out and must leave the park. In fact, Sisko wouldn't have been allowed to sit in the bleachers, but we'll let that one slide.

@monsieuricon baseball's one of the only sports i can enjoy

Here's another one: in Little Big League (1994) the protagonist's team wins by calling time, and then using a hidden ball trick to tag out the runner when the umpire calls "play" again. That's against the rules, because the play can only resume when the pitcher has the ball and re-engages with the rubber. The umpire would have never called "play" in the first place without seeing the ball return to the pitcher, and even if they did call "play" by mistake, the tag-out would have been immediately contested by the other team's manager and overturned. Sorry!

Finally, everyone's favourite confusing rule: infield fly. This rule exists to protect the team running the bases and, like any other rule, was added to prevent abuse. With two runners on first and second, or with bases full and fewer than 2 outs, a blooper infield hit by the batter would normally result in a catch and the batter being out. However, if the infielder intentionally doesn't catch that ball and lets it drop in front of them, now the runners suddenly have to advance, which can lead to an easy double play (two outs) or even triple play (three outs). So, the rule was put in place to prevent this abuse and force the situation to always result in a single out by calling only the batter out and removing the force from the other runners.

And this is why you should put your nerdy couch potato kid into baseball. First of all, it's not a very athletic sport, not like soccer or basketball where you have to run all the time. Baseball started out as a pastime for American inner city dudes who really kinda hated exercise. You *may* have to run once or twice during the game, but more often than not you just stand in place and mostly miss the ball.

However, your kids will get some very valuable lessons if they play on a baseball team. First, that oftentimes winning requires a team effort. As opposed to football or basketball, you can't win with only one decent player on your team -- no matter how good they are, they aren't going to be able to run that ball in from the outfield for a tag-out at home. Everyone will need to work with each-other for that out, even if they don't get along. Yeah, you may have spectacularly caught a fly in the center field, but now there's a runner advancing home from second and you're going to have to relay this ball via the kid playing shortstop -- yeah, the kid who shuts their eyes whenever the ball gets near them. But once they have the ball, the kid is solid, so you just need to gently lob the ball so it lands by their feet. You need to know and play to your team's strengths and weaknesses if you want to win.

However, there will always be times when the whole game is down to just you. It's the last inning and there's two outs and your winning runner is on third yelling "bring me home!" If you strike out or do a weak blooper that gets caught, the game is lost for everyone. The whole team depends on you to do well and do the right thing. So much weight and pressure. So much like real life. Yeah, some kids hate that, but it really does build that thick skin you will need to deal with failure as an adult -- your own, and your friends'.

So, fellow nerds, put your kids into baseball. Baseball is life.

@monsieuricon This may be the most @Taweret post I've ever seen somebody else make 😆

@monsieuricon Would standing behind the plate give you a good view to make calls? Does Odo's position make any sense if he just isn't worried about getting hit with a foul?

@unlofl I don't think positioning on the other side of the catcher makes sense even if the holodeck safety protocols are protecting the umpire from being hurt by foul balls. The catcher would block your view of the batter, which would complicate a number of calls: hit by a pitch, foot positioning inside the batter box, not to mention that you'd have a very bad angle to see the inside of the strike zone.

@orionkidder to clarify, if you hit a pop fly and it lands on your own head? Then that depends if you're still in the batter box or out of it. If you're still in the box, it's a foul ball. If you're making your way to a base, then that's interference and you're out if you're touched by the ball in fair territory. If you're touched by it in foul territory, then it's a foul ball.

@monsieuricon I have never been able to figure out why some pitches are appropriate occasions for stealing a base and some aren't.

@Klepsis all pitches are appropriate occasions, just may not be very smart decisions depending on what else is happening on the field. It's a constant game of chicken between the runner, the pitcher, the catcher and the fielders working those bases. Unfortunately, it would require writing a whole essay to properly explain the right time to steal a base from the wrong time to steal a base.

@monsieuricon I know it isn't strictly true that any pitch is appropriate for stealing. If the result of the pitch is that the ball is batted foul into the stands, that would be a great time to steal — I mean, how are they going to the you out? But that clearly can't be legal, it's unfair. But where is the line?

@Klepsis the runner decides to steal a base before the pitcher even fully winds up, so they can't know if it's going to be batted foul or fair. However, if the ball is batted foul, the runner must return to the base they last legally reached at the time of the pitch, so there is no such thing as stealing on a foul ball.

@monsieuricon All right, I'll bite.

Is the strike zone defined in absolute units or relative units? All I've ever heard of it is in relation to a player's uniform.

@TheyOfHIShirts traditionally, the strike zone is whatever the umpire says it is. :) The MLB strike zone is a 3-d shape above the home plate. It helps to imagine it as a 5-sided column that starts at the "hollow below the knee" and goes to the midpoint between the batter's belt and armpits. It's never defined in absolute measurements because it always scales with the batter. When a robo-umpire is used, I believe the player's parameters are pre-calculated and uploaded into the computer ahead of time.

The most important thing to know about the strike zone is that younger levels are going to have a larger strike zone. If you're watching a little league/youth game, don't expect the umpire to be calling the MLB strike zone -- the upper, lower, and outside boundaries are going to be expanded, otherwise the game is going to be a boring everyone-gets-walked-to-first slog. Parents watching from the side don't appreciate this nuance, so they always get mad when you call a chest-high ball a strike on their 10-year-old kid, but that's a sign that the umpire is doing the right thing -- the goal is to encourage kids to swing even at less-than-perfect pitches.

@monsieuricon Delightful, thank you, and good to know that I've been doing the right thing when I've been doing it at the learning levels and the beer leagues. (Not so much any more, but I did do it once upon a time.)

Second question: does the rulebook define minimum parameters that a stadium or other venue must have to play a game of baseball, or does it only define things like the distance between bases, between the pitching rubber and home plate, and the dimensions of the bases themselves?

@TheyOfHIShirts That depends on the rulebook. There are actually multiple sets of rules for baseball. The MLB uses the "Official Baseball Rules" rulebook (OBR). US high schools have a different set of rules called the NFHS/FED. And then colleges have a yet another set of rules called NCAA. The three major rule sets are *mostly* the same but field dimensions requirements do vary. The MLB/OBR rule set does define minimal distances for the outfield, but not much more than that, which is how you can have huge fields and relatively tiny fields in the same league.