#4strikeouts

KKKK

Baseball is a traditional game, steeped in history and statistics. No wonder I like it.

For you uninterested or ill-informed Brits, here's the lowdown.

Baseball is like rounders. Teams of 9 (though there are many substitutions in a game) alternately bat nine times each. Three outs (either on strikes, caught or run out) are required to end an inning. So there are 27 outs per team in a game. Runs are scored if a batter makes it all the way round the four bases (not necessarily in one go - a home run) and the team with the most runs after nine innings wins.

Some call it boring, or slow. I find it fascinating and lot deeper than meets the eye.

And then there's those 'impossible' statistics that make you (well, me) smile.

Remember I spoke of getting out on strikes? It's a touch complicated, with foul balls counting as strikes until the third, but essentially three strikes and you're out. Three strikeouts in an inning, though a pitcher's dream, is not all that common, though, with run outs and catches just as common and only three outs in all needed to bat again.

But what about four strikeouts in an inning?

How is that even possible?

Remember I said it can get complicated?

A strikeout is only recorded as an out if the batter doesn't reach first base after the strike. Runners can run on 'wild pitches' and those that are spilled by the catcher, so if a pitcher strikes a batter out swinging but the batter reaches after an error behind home plate, the inning continues. Hence the possibility of four strikeouts (only three recorded as outs) in an inning.

Such a thing happened last night at Fenway Park. Detroit pitcher Anibal Sanchez (once of the Red Sox) recorded four strikeouts in an inning for only the second time in the history of postseason baseball and for the first time in 105 years. (Incidentally, the first guy to do it in the postseason was for the Chicago Cubs. His name? Orval Overall. What a name!)

I can't think of another, equally improbable and rare, event in any other sport. Maybe a break of 155 in snooker, but that's about it. It's certainly an interesting and confusing feat that relies so heavily on an unusual technicality as well as the skill of the player.