Tom Harris from Bluebell, Pennsylvania, wonders: In baseball, when a batter is said to take a ball, what exactly does take mean in that context? Batters have been advised to take a ball since the mid-1850s, when rule changes established the modern strike zone and forced batters to make split-second decisions about whether to swing. The 1854 source documented in Edward J. Nichols’s Penn State thesis, An Historical Dictionary of Baseball Terminology, describes it as letting a fair pitched ball go past without offering to strike it. To take a ball is to deliberately hold back, putting yourself at a slight disadvantage in the moment, but betting on a more favorable pitch ahead. For a really deep dive into the history of the game, check out Protoball, which catalogues old rules, early statistics, and games that resemble baseball but aren’t quite. This is part of a complete episode.
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One common link in baseball lingo between to “take” a pitch and to “look” at a pitch is the passive approach by the batter. So when a batter with two strikes is called out after declining to swing at a pitch that crosses the strike zone, he is out on strikes and said to have been “caught looking.” On the other hand, the verb “commit” implies the action on the batter’s part. The batter might have “committed” to early or late on pitches that deceived, or the batter is “committed,” in the judgment of the umpire, once a swing reaches a certain point, even if it’s not completed.