Clipping:Scoring sacrifice hits 4
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| Date | Wednesday, February 3, 1886 |
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| Text | [from the Baltimore correspondent] It is noticed that the old scheme in favor of is being revived. The plan is to add to the tabulated score a “batting assist” column, and in it give the batter credit for each sacrifice or long fly hit which advances a runner a base, although the batsman is thrown or caught out. Several years ago it was the custom in St. Louis, it is believed, to score a base hit for this class of plays, but was afterward abandoned to follow the plan in other cities and to make a more uniform system. At first blush it does seem that the player should have credit for this feat attempted and accomplished, but there is the rub—how is the scorer to be able to tell whether the batsman really did try to make a sacrifice hit? He might have selfishly been trying for a base hit and “scratched” a sacrifice. Of course, there are some cases where it is clearly seen that a sacrifice was in the mind of the player, but in the long fly hit it would be almost impossible for the scorer to decide with any certainty. As the tabulated score merely serves to make up a record of the value of a player as far as its intrinsic worth is concerned in the business of base ball, each man should have nearly an equal number of chances offered him to make his record. Each time a player has a “time at bat” he has a “chance” offered him of making a base hit, but if he is the first hand at bat or the last hand at bat he might have no “chance” offered him of making a sacrifice, while his comrade who was second at bat might, if there was a man on base. In other words, the second batsman might have two chances (one for a base hit and another for a sacrifice) to the one each of the other two batsmen. … As there are very few chances in the ordinary game for a sacrifice hit, or at least where it is the best part of wisdom to attempt it (perhaps not more than an average of one or two for the whole team), and there are usually four or five chances per man for a base hit, the one or two lucky men of the nine would have the advantage of the other seven or eight. It hardly seems possible then to make up a fair record of sacrifice hits, but this class of team workers are quite well known to the managers and public and those player have the encouragement of assurance that they are recognized and appreciated. … It does not require a system of averages to rate the value of such men. Sacrifice hitting seems to belong to those points of the game, life base running &c., which is of equal value with batting and fielding, but perhaps not susceptible of being tabulated with sufficient accuracy to make them anything but misleading, and if that should prove to be the case it is one of those things that the spectator alone can enjoy almost to the exclusion of the reader. The Sporting Life February 3, 1886 early mention of Charles Ebbetts President Byrne of the Brooklyn club now has a private secretary a la Von der Ahe. The gentleman’s name is C. Ebbets. He didn’t resign a profitable newspaper ‘sit” for the job. St. Louis Post-Dispatch February 6, 1886 |
| Source | Sporting Life |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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