You think you know something for your whole life, and then ...
The phrase “batting around” has existed in baseball as long as anybody can remember. It originated more than a century ago and remains a ubiquitous part of the sport’s lexicon.
But what does it mean? Among baseball’s most ardent fans, players and officials, there is no consensus about how many hitters must reach the plate in an inning to constitute batting around.
--snip--
It turns out that batting around has no official definition and isn’t an official MLB statistic. Followers of the game tend to assume that their own interpretation is by-the-book right.
When the question was posed to New York Mets captain David Wright, he didn’t hesitate. “Ten,” he said.
As far as Wright was concerned, nobody could disagree. To prove as much, he called over his teammate, John Mayberry Jr. Mayberry said nine, just as emphatically. Wright was stunned.
I'm stunned, too. I'm stunned that Wright would be stunned, since it seems to me so obvious that the John Mayberry Jr. Mayberry is exactly, indisputably right: NINE.
Literally, doesn't BATTING AROUND simply mean EVERY MAN BATTING? Isn't NINE one of baseball's magical numbers, while TEN is more suited to the gridiron.
Of course everyone's already formed granite-hard opinions about this, probably based on whomever taught them about baseball when they were still knee-high to a fire hydrant. But I simply can't imagine any reasonable argument for any number other than nine. When David Wright is older and wiser, he'll probably join the forces of Reason, too.
