Clipping:A query about tagging up; need the runner be tagged?
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| Date | Sunday, May 8, 1859 |
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| Text | [a letter to the editor from Buffalo] Section 16 of the Rules and Regulations of Base Ball, is not very clear to your correspondent, and he would like to be enlightened upon the subject. We will suppose there is a player on the first-base, and one striking. A ball is struck far down the field, and the player on first base runs to his second base, but, seeing that the ball is caught on the fly, runs back to his first. Now, what your correspondent wants to learn is this: Can the player running the bases start against as soon as he has gone back to his base, or must he wait until the ball has been in the pitcher’s hands?... The section, or rule, in question makes no provision that the player should, in the instance pointed out, wait until the ball has been settled in the pitcher’s hands.... Under the rule in vogue last season, the ball was considered dead... and it was further provided, that players could not be put out in returning to the bases, “unless the ball had been first pitched to the striker.” It will be seen that the new rule makes no provision for anything of this kind. Consequently, it appears to us to be sufficient, in the case pointed out by our Buffalo correspondent, that the player running the bases at the time a ball is caught on the fly, should return, and touch the base from which he started, and if, after so doing, he can make a base, he has full right to do so, for anything that is stipulated in the rule. The object of the rule was to offer a greater inducement to catch the ball on the fly, by making it imperative that runners should return to bases, while the catcher of the ball has the further advantage of an opportunity to head off the party so returning, by sending the ball to the base in advance of him, and thus put him out. New York Sunday Mercury May 8, 1859 [ letter to the editor from New York] What are your views of the play of the following kind? A runner is on the second, and one of the third base; the batter raises the ball, and it is held, on the fly, by the second base man, who steps on his base before the runner shall have returned, and plays the ball to the third base, and it is held there under the same circumstances, viz.: before the runner has returned, would that not constitute three hands out? Or do you think the rule intends that the ball shall be placed on the runner returning to his base? Our friend...has not very attentively read Rules 14 and 15, or he would not have been at all mystified on the subject of his communication. We reproduce them for his enlightenment... It is, therefore, plain, that in the case pointed out... there was but one hand out (the striker) instead of three–for, under the Rules, it is absolutely necessary, on any other than the first base, that the ball should not only be held, but that the party running for, or returning to, a base shall be touched with the ball before reaching it, in order to be put out. New York Sunday Mercury May 22, 1859 |
| Source | New York Sunday Mercury |
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Origin | Initial Hershberger Clippings |
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