Baseball Quiz — 50 Questions, Ending at the Rule Book

How many players from the fielding team are on the field during play?

Answer Nine

Nine, and their positions are numbered rather than named in the scorebook. That is why a double play can be recorded as a short string of digits and read back by anyone who knows the code.

How many outs end a half-inning?

Answer Three

Three, and the number has never changed. Almost everything else in the rulebook has been revised at some point — the count of outs is one of the few constants from the earliest written rules.

What is the distance between bases on a standard adult field?

Answer 90 feet

Ninety feet, set in 1857 and never altered. It is often called the most nearly perfect number in sport, because it makes an ordinary ground ball a close play by a step or two rather than a comfortable out.

How many balls make a walk?

Answer Four

Four. It was nine in 1879 and came down in stages over the following two decades, as the game shifted from the pitcher serving the ball to the pitcher trying to defeat the batter.

What shape is home plate?

Answer A five-sided figure

Five sides. It began square, was turned to face the pitcher as a diamond, and reached the present shape in 1900 so that the edges of the strike zone would be visible in a straight line to the umpire.

Which team bats first?

Answer The visiting team

The visiting team, which means the home team always gets the last turn to bat. That is a real advantage and it is the only structural benefit the home side has, since the field itself is not neutral in any other sport quite this way.

What happens if the score is tied after the ninth inning?

Answer Play continues in extra innings

Play continues, because the game has no clock. In principle it could go on indefinitely, and the longest major league game on record ran twenty-six innings before being called for darkness.

What is the batter's box?

Answer The marked area beside the plate where the batter must stand

The marked rectangle beside the plate. Its edges matter: a batter who steps entirely outside it while making contact is out, which is a rule most spectators have never seen enforced.

What is a foul ball that is caught before touching the ground?

Answer An out

An out, and runners may then advance if they wait until the catch is completed. That combination — a foul that is also a live ball — is one of the parts of the game that takes newcomers longest to absorb.

How many strikes make an out?

Answer Three

Three, but a foul ball counts as a strike only for the first two. Without that exception a skilled batter could not stay alive by fouling off pitches, which is one of the most watchable things in the sport.

Which position stands between second and third base?

Answer Shortstop

The shortstop, and the position was invented after the others. It began as an extra fielder stationed to relay throws from the outfield back to the infield, back when the ball was too light to be thrown that far.

Which fielder is closest to the batter?

Answer The catcher

The catcher, the only player facing the opposite direction from everyone else. It is also the most equipped position and the one with the shortest average career, for reasons the equipment makes obvious.

What does a designated hitter do?

Answer Bats in place of another player without fielding

Bats without fielding. One league adopted it in 1973 and the other refused until 2022, so for forty-nine years the two halves of the same competition played by different rules.

What is a battery in baseball?

Answer The pitcher and catcher together

The pitcher and catcher taken together. The term comes from artillery, and it entered the game in the nineteenth century when military metaphors were much commoner in sports writing than they are now.

What is a relief pitcher?

Answer A pitcher who comes in after another has left

A pitcher who enters after another has left. The specialization is recent: for most of the sport's history a starter was expected to finish what he began, and completing a game was ordinary rather than remarkable.

Where does the center fielder play?

Answer In the middle of the outfield, behind second base

In the middle of the outfield, behind second base, and covering more ground than either of the others. That is why the position is usually given to the fastest outfielder regardless of arm strength.

Why does the catcher give signs?

Answer To tell the pitcher what to throw and where

To tell the pitcher what to throw and where. Stealing those signs from the field has always been legal and part of the game; stealing them with technology is not, and the distinction has produced the sport's largest modern scandal.

What is a double play most often?

Answer Two outs recorded on one play

Two outs on one play, most often a ground ball turned at second and then at first. It is called the pitcher's best friend, and the phrase is old enough to appear in newspapers from the 1920s.

What does a cut-off man do?

Answer Takes the throw from the outfield and relays it

Takes the throw from the outfield and relays it. The point is not only distance — standing in the line of the throw lets that fielder change the target if another runner tries to advance.

What is a pinch hitter?

Answer A substitute who bats in place of a scheduled hitter

A substitute who bats in place of the scheduled hitter and then, in most cases, must leave or take a position. The move costs a player, which is why managers spend more thought on it than on almost any other decision.

What does a batting average measure?

Answer Hits divided by official at-bats

Hits divided by official at-bats, with walks excluded from the denominator. A .300 average is the traditional mark of a good hitter, and nobody in the major leagues has reached .400 for a season since 1941.

What is an RBI?

Answer A run that scores as a result of the batter's action

A run scoring as a result of what the batter did. It is criticized as a measure of individual skill for an obvious reason: you cannot drive in runners who are not there, so the statistic partly measures the teammates hitting ahead of you.

What does ERA measure?

Answer Earned runs allowed per nine innings

Earned runs allowed per nine innings, where earned excludes runs that scored because of a fielding error. That exclusion is what makes it a measure of the pitcher rather than of the team behind him.

Does a walk count as a hit?

Answer No — the batter reaches base but it is not a hit

No. The batter reaches base but it is not a hit and does not count as an at-bat, which is precisely why a separate statistic had to be invented to capture how often a player avoids making an out.

What is an error?

Answer A misplay by a fielder that allows a batter or runner to advance

A misplay that lets a batter or runner advance. It is the only major statistic in the sport decided by opinion — an official scorer watching the game rules on it, and scorers are known to differ.

What is a sacrifice fly?

Answer A caught fly ball on which a runner scores, and the batter is not charged an at-bat

A caught fly on which a runner scores, and the batter is not charged an at-bat, so his average is unaffected. The rule has been added, removed and reinstated several times, which is unusual for something so small.

How many bases does a batter get on a home run over the fence?

Answer Four — a full circuit

Four, and he must touch every one of them. Runners have been called out after crossing the plate for missing a base on the way, which is why the celebration is supposed to wait until the circuit is complete.

What is on-base percentage?

Answer How often a batter reaches base, counting walks and hit by pitch

How often a batter reaches base at all, counting walks and being hit by a pitch. It was long treated as a secondary number and became famous when a book about a low-budget team argued it had been undervalued for decades.

What is a shutout?

Answer A game in which one side does not score

A game in which one side does not score. It is credited to the pitching side rather than to an individual unless one pitcher went the whole way, which is now rare enough to be news.

What is a save credited to?

Answer A relief pitcher who finishes a close game their team wins, under set conditions

A relief pitcher who protects a close lead to the end, under conditions set out in the rules. It is one of the very few statistics in any sport invented by a journalist — a sportswriter proposed it in 1960 and the leagues adopted it in 1969.

In which country did baseball develop into its modern form in the nineteenth century?

Answer The United States

The United States, over the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The story that one man invented it in a field in 1839 was produced by a commission in 1907 and is not supported by any evidence; the game clearly evolved from earlier bat-and-ball games.

What is the professional league in Japan called?

Answer Nippon Professional Baseball

Nippon Professional Baseball, formed in its current two-league shape in 1950. Its teams are named after their corporate owners rather than their cities, which is the most visible structural difference from the American leagues.

What are the two leagues that make up Major League Baseball?

Answer The American League and the National League

The American League and the National League, which were genuinely separate businesses with separate offices and separate umpires until 2000. They now operate as one organization but keep the names and the records.

Which countries of the Caribbean basin became a major source of professional players?

Answer The Dominican Republic and Venezuela

The Dominican Republic and Venezuela. The concentration is remarkable at a smaller scale too: one Dominican town has produced an extraordinary number of major league shortstops, enough that the pattern has its own literature.

What is the national high school tournament in Japan traditionally held at?

Answer A stadium in Hyōgo Prefecture known as Kōshien

A stadium in Hyōgo Prefecture. The tournament is single elimination, so most of the schools that qualify play exactly one game — and the losing teams traditionally carry home a bag of the infield dirt.

What does the World Baseball Classic bring together?

Answer National teams from many countries

National teams rather than clubs, which is unusual for a sport whose best players are concentrated in one country's league. It has done more than anything else to make the sport's international map visible to American audiences.

What was the color line in American baseball?

Answer The exclusion of Black players from the white major leagues until 1947

The exclusion of Black players from the white major leagues, which ended in 1947. The number worn by the player who broke it has since been retired across every team in the league, the only such honor in American sport.

What are the Negro Leagues remembered for?

Answer Professional leagues where excluded Black players competed at the highest level

Professional leagues where excluded players competed at the highest level. In recent years their statistics have been reclassified as major league records, which changed several all-time leaderboards decades after the fact.

How did baseball spread to Japan and Korea?

Answer Through schools and teachers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Through schools and teachers around the turn of the twentieth century. An American teacher is credited with introducing it in Japan in the 1870s, and a missionary with introducing it in Korea in 1905 — in both cases it arrived as education rather than as entertainment.

What is a farm system?

Answer A network of lower-level clubs where players develop for a parent team

A network of lower-level clubs developing players for one parent team. It was assembled deliberately in the 1920s by one executive, and it changed the economics of the sport by making clubs producers of players rather than buyers.

What is the infield fly rule for?

Answer To stop a fielder dropping an easy pop-up on purpose to get a double play

To stop a fielder deliberately dropping an easy pop-up in order to turn a double play on runners who had to hold their bases. It is one of very few rules that exists purely to forbid something legal but unsporting.

What is a balk?

Answer An illegal motion by the pitcher with runners on, which advances them

An illegal motion by the pitcher with runners on base, which advances them. The rulebook lists more than a dozen distinct ways to commit one, and the underlying principle is simply that the pitcher may not deceive the runner about whether he is going to pitch.

When may a runner leave the base on a caught fly ball?

Answer After the fielder first touches the ball

After the fielder first touches the ball — not after the catch is secured. That distinction matters on a bobbled catch, and it is why runners watch the fielder's glove rather than the umpire.

What happens when a fair ball bounces over the outfield fence?

Answer It is a ground rule double and runners advance a set number of bases

It is a ground rule double and runners advance a set number of bases. The rule exists because otherwise the fielder's difficulty would be arbitrary, depending on how the ball happened to bounce over a wall.

What is a dropped third strike?

Answer A situation where the batter may run to first if the catcher fails to catch strike three, under set conditions

The batter may run to first if the catcher fails to catch strike three, under conditions. The rule survives from a time before the catcher's mitt, when catching a pitch cleanly was genuinely hard, and it is now the sport's most confusing surviving artifact.

Is a runner out if hit by a batted ball in fair territory?

Answer Generally yes, if it has not passed a fielder first

Generally yes, if the ball has not passed a fielder first. The exception matters because after the ball goes by an infielder the runner is no longer interfering with a play that could still be made.

What does the umpire's foul line ruling depend on?

Answer Whether the ball is fair or foul at the point that matters, with the lines themselves in fair territory

The lines themselves are in fair territory, which surprises people — and so are the tall poles at the end of them, despite being called foul poles. A ball striking either is fair.

Can a batter be out on a foul bunt with two strikes?

Answer Yes — a bunted foul on a third strike is an out

Yes, and it is the only case in which a foul ball ends an at-bat. The rule exists to stop a batter bunting foul indefinitely to wait out a pitcher, which the ordinary foul-ball exception would otherwise permit.

What is interference by a runner?

Answer Hindering a fielder attempting to make a play, which can result in an out

Hindering a fielder attempting to make a play, which can put the runner out and sometimes the batter too. The judgment is about whether the fielder was actually attempting a play, not about whether contact occurred.

Why is a pitch clock or time limit used in many leagues?

Answer To keep the pace of play by limiting delay between pitches

To limit delay between pitches. When the major leagues adopted one in 2023 the average game time fell by roughly twenty-four minutes immediately, which is a larger single-season change than any rule in the sport's modern history.