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.
Transcript of “What it Means to “Take a Ball” in Baseball”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hello, this is Tom Harris from Bluebell, Pennsylvania.
Hi Tom, welcome to the program.
What’s up?
Well I’ve always had a question about a baseball term.
The announcers frequently when they’re calling a game will say that the battery I didn’t know if it came from takes a pass, takes a gander, takes a I don’t know what, but I’d love to know where that expression was derived.
Yeah, batters have been advised by managers to take a ball since the mid eighteen fifties or so.
And and I think by take grant wouldn’t you say it’s like like taking one for the team you’re sort of forcing yourself to the side.
Yeah, that’s perfect.
You’re allowing yourself to be in a disadvantaged situation because ideally you should be swinging at all pitches, good pitches that come across the plate, but because there may be something better happening in the next pitch, you’re gonna wait on it.
And and and so you’re putting yourself in just a little bit of a disadvantage.
Yeah and there was a a thesis written by Edward J.
Nichols at Penn State.
He wrote a thesis called an historical dictionary of baseball terminology that’s super detailed, and he dates this expression all the way back to 1854, talking about letting a fair pitched ball go past without offering to strike it.
And the need for a specific term like this arose after there were big rule changes in the 1800s.
Batters originally had the right to request either a high pitch or a low pitch.
And then once they established the modern strike zone and called strikes that that made batters have to decide, you know, in a split second, they adopted this term to describe that deliberate choice of just you know holding back restraining yourself and letting the ball go across the plate.
But you don’t think it’s an abbreviation for something like take a pass, take a look.
Well no, take is so to speak one of those utility players in the English language and take has a lot of accompanying and modifying and and assisting roles with other language and other words.
So take itself is more of a helping verb in this situation, although I don’t think it fits the strict definition of a helping verb.
Okay.
Well that’s very helpful.
Well thank you and I’ll I’ll take a look next time I hear him say it and think of what you’ve told me.
Tom there’s one last thing I want to leave you with since you seem so interested in the old rules about you know calling your pitch.
There’s a cool website called ProtoBall.org p-r-o-t-o-b-a-d-l-l dot org and they have all the old rules of baseball.
They have all the old stats that guys who are obsessive about this stuff have gone through old records and newspapers and recorded every game they could find.
Way far back to like the beginning of baseball.
And and my favorite thing about it is they have this glossary of games that seem like baseball but aren’t really baseball.
Just fascinating.
Stuff So we’ll we’ll take a look for that too.
Yeah.
Take a look.
Well that’s great.
Well thank you guys so much.
Great show.
Love it every week.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Okay now.
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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.