Social Distancing
- cdavid508
- Jul 12, 2020
- 1 min read
T-shirt slogan: “6+4+3=2.” Me being not much of a sports fan, it took me awhile to figure that out. And now that I have I no longer want that t-shirt. I remove it from my cart. The t-shirt I want says “By Appointment Only” Perfect shirt in the time of COVID.
Fucking baseball. I'm more just 'Fuck baseball.' Boring. In the early days of baseball the ball was lighter than today. It was difficult for outfielders to toss the ball to infielders. To address this problem the position of roaming outfielder was invented. This player acted as a relay between the outfield and infield. This implies the position was, for lack of a better description, the inner outfielder position. Later, when the ball was made heavier (or people got stronger - not sure on this one), this inner outfielder position was no longer needed and was moved into what's now the SS position. I guess the numbering system goes from infield to outfield; So inner outfielder was always in position 6,…
Also, presumably the #6 player was the left-left fielder and the #7 player was the left-center fielder, right? So if you consider where they were positioned, wouldn't the #7 player be the more likely choice to move into the dirt and you'd just shift the others? And why couldn't they just renumber everybody? Box scores, I suppose. Would've ruined the integrity of the game or some shit. Fucking baseball, man.
This must have still been in the days when Babe Ruth supposedly paid a kid to run the bases for him after a homer because he was too hungover to bother. Having only three infielders is dumb as shit!
I know jack-shit about sports, but I do know why the shortstop is #6. In the early days of baseball, the shortstop position was actually in the outfield. The numbering went through the infield and then the outfield. Only in the modern era (which started when?) did the position become part of the infield.
For as many times as I've heard announcers say "6-4-3 double play," it still took me a minute as well. Never understood why the shortstop is #6 and the third basemen is #5, when first and second are #s 3 and 4 respectively. Fucking baseball, man. Abner Doubleday was an idiot.