Inside Baseball

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Inside Baseball is a strategy in baseball developed by the 19th century Baltimore Orioles team and promoted by John McGraw.^[1] McGraw himself, in his book, My Thirty Years of Baseball, credits the development of the "inside baseball" to Ned Hanlon.^[2] In fact, in 1890s this kind of play was referred to as "Oriole baseball" or "Baltimore baseball". ^[3]

Another team praised for their inside baseball was Chicago Cubs.

Contents 1 Description 2 Metaphor 3 See also 4 References

[edit] Description

It is an offensive strategy that focuses on teamwork and good execution. It usually centers on tactics that keep the ball in the infield: walks, base hits, bunts, and stolen bases. One such play, where the batter deliberately strikes the pitched ball downward onto the infield surface with sufficient force such that the ball rebounds skyward, allowing the batter to reach first base safely before the opposing team can field the ball, remains known as a Baltimore Chop.

Another term in use in 1890s for this style was scientific baseball, referring to calculated one-run game strategies based on intelligent, cooperative actions of the players. McGraw in his book writes: "So-called inside baseball is mostly bunk. It is merely working out of definite plans that the public does not observe."

This strategy did not rely on big hits and home runs.^[1] and became the primary offensive strategy during the dead-ball era.

The equivalent modern term is "small ball".

Critics also note that the reputation of the Orioles for the "inside baseball" grew only in the retrospective and at the time the Orioles were more famous for deliberately playing dirty. ^[4]

[edit] Metaphor

"Inside baseball" is also a common metaphor in American politics to describe background machinations.

Press critic Jay Rosen in a post in his personal blog, PressThink, argues that the metaphorical use of the term in a wider sense was originated and propagated by Bill James:

"The origins of the term "inside baseball" are in one writer's view of sports reporting during the 1980s. He's Bill James, now a famous scholar of baseball. The arguments he made then explain why the term migrated so easily to politics. The inside, said James, is a hall of mirrors."^[5]

Rosen claims that Bill James questioned the sports reporters' practice to gain information "from the inside", from locker rooms, which resulted in overconfidence leaving the reporters in fact clueless about what actually happens in the game. Bill James noticed and satirized the proliferation of titles in books and newspater columns of type "Inside Baseball" (see Inside Baseball (disambiguation)), "Inside Football", "Inside Pitch", etc.^[5]

[edit] See also

• List of baseball jargon

[edit] References