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Inside the Park Home Run

Most of the time, when a batter gets a home run, it’s because they hit the ball out of the park. But! Occasionally, a batter will get a home run without the ball going over the wall. Welcome to the inside-the-park home run.

Inside-the-park home runs are usually the result of a defensive misplay that won’t be scored an error. For example: an outfielder dives to make a catch, and misses— or worse, an outfielder completely loses track of the ball. Alternatively, if a ball caroms off the outfield wall in just the right way, and the batter is fast enough, it can go for an inside-the-parker. The combination of things that have to go right/wrong for an inside-the-park home run is pretty rare, so there aren’t very many of them, even over the course of an entire season of MLB play.

Aside from the whole “ball doesn’t go over the fence” business, an inside-the-park home run is just like its more cinematically bombastic counterpart: all of the other runners on base are going to score, but they still have to touch the bases, in order. If one of them doesn’t, the defense can make what’s called an “appeal” to the umpire who is in charge of the base. Specifically, before the next pitch is thrown, the pitcher steps off the rubber, and throws the ball to the base in question, where a fielder will catch the ball and tag the base. If the umpire agrees that the runner never touched the base, that runner will be called out, and their run does not count— and if they were the third out of the inning, any runs that would have come after them don’t count, either. This type of thing is exceptionally rare, but it does still happen occasionally. The rise of replay means that teams may jump directly to a replay challenge instead of making the appeal, first.

All home runs, including inside-the-park jobs, are labeled by the number of runs they produce. If there is no one on base when a home run is hit, it’s a solo home run— if there’s one runner on, it’s a two-run homer, etc., all the way up to a home run hit with the bases loaded, which is known as a “grand slam.”