MESA, Ariz. — Sitting through a spring training exhibition baseball that gets out of hand early gives you time to let your mind wander.
Today’s game between the Oakland A’s and the Chicago Cubs was a blowout when we decided to leave at the end of the seventh inning. The A’s were leading 15-2 and the Cubs looked as though they wanted the game to be over immediately.
So, where did my mind wander?
I was wondering why a wild pitch or a passed ball — mistakes committed by pitchers and catchers, respectively — aren’t scored as an “error” in the box score.
Baseball is a game of statistics. You can find a stat for anything, any activity, any good deed or misdeed committed on the field.
The Cubs’ right fielder today was dinged for two errors on the same play as he booted the ball twice while trying to pick it up deep in the right-field corner. The A’s hitter was credited with a double, but he ended up on third base as the ball finally got thrown into the infield.
We saw three passed balls today. Yes, the errors were logged in the scorebook as “passed balls,” but not as errors. Why not?
The catcher erred in letting the ball get by him, allowing runners to advance; had the ball gotten past the catcher with no one on base, there wouldn’t be a record of it in the scorebook.
I pose these questions as a way to make pitchers and catchers even more, um, accountable for the mistakes they make on the field. A pitcher goes wild, that’s his mistake; a catcher lets a catchable pitch slip past him, that his error.
They ought to show up — on the record — in the book of baseball records.
You went to a Cubs game. Ha ha. Why a passed ball and wild pitch are not errors?
A ball park guess. Because of ERA. Errors committed effect a pitchers Earned Run Average.
Changing a wild pitch and passed ball to errors would make a pitcher and the battery less accountable. And a passed ball is not always the fault of the catcher. He may have been crossed up by the pitcher, or miscommuncation by both.
The Cubs. We lived in Wrigleyville for a decade. A block and a half from the friendly confines. We went to many a baseball games. We left when they upped the number of night games.
We still go to watch the Ivy grow, as we’re only a couple of miles from Wrigley now. But what we really like is to go north across the “Cheddar Curtain” and catch some single A or AA games.
Go Cubs
I had no particular favorite, although I used to like the A’s of 1972-74 — Rollie Fingers, Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson … those guys. Thanks for the comment.