Hands a part of the bat - history?
 

Since I have been given some great history lessons here, I thought I'd ask a question that has been slightly bugging me for years. I know the hands are not an extension of the bat, though I have heard that growing up and recently, sadly, by fellow broadcasters. How did that idea get started? Were the hands ever an extension of the bat in the ancient rulebooks?

Nope.

It might have started because, under certain situations, the proper call can be intepreted as that by fans, parents, network broadcasters and other morons.

Example: Batter is hit on the hands as he is swinging. The ball goes into foul territory.

In reality, the umpire calls time, deadball strike.

In appearance to the above mentioned individuals, foul ball.

Only in cricket.

It might have derived partly from basketball, where "the hand is part of the ball." or at least you hear people say that. I don't know basketball rules.

It was a misunderstanding -- similar to that game of "Telephone" we all played as kids. Abner Doubleday was asked about the rule and said, "The hands are apart from the bat." A no-nothing sportswriter (who, btw, has been reincarnated as Joe Morgan) heard it as "The hands are a part of the bat." The rest is history.

Hehehehehe ......
 

Now that's funny, I don't care who you are.:D

And we thought it was hard with Howard Cousell!! I think Joe studied every tape of his!:D

voiceoflg,

From what I have read, both baseball and cricket evolved (or was it simply an intelligent design??) from an earlier game called Rounders, which was more similar to cricket than to baseball.

Under the rules of cricket, the hands are explicitly, by rule, treated as "part of the bat", as SD Steve alluded to in his earlier post. In baseball, the hands, by rule, are treated as part of the player's "person".

It has been suggested to me that the "historical" origin of the "hands are part of the bat" myth in baseball is that is how they were treated in the progenitor game of rounders. This tradition carried on in cricket, but was changed in baseball.

While I certainly find this theory plausible, I have never found anything that definitively says this is the derivation of the myth (and I've looked).

JM

I like Bob's explanation better!:)

I doubt that a 200 year old rule from rounders that never made it in baseball rulebook to begin with lived on.

I think it more likely that the same stupidity, misunderstanding and childhood memories that keeps people thinking that pictches that hit the dirt before the plate are dead, that the plate is foul and that the tie goes to anybody has more to do with it.