Click here for more dingers!

Fly Ball Home Run

The term “home run” is one of those baseball terms that has been subsumed into the broader American culture, and tends to show up in applications far removed from baseball. In these more general contexts, you can use the term “home run” as a way of signifying a success (a “home run presentation") or triumph (“they really hit a home run with their presentation”). But what about the original baseball context?

In baseball, a home run is when the batter comes up to the plate, and hits a ball that allows them to run all the way around the bases before returning back to home and scoring a run. There are two broad categories of home run— a “normal” home run, in which the ball is hit over the fence on the fly, and the “inside-the-park” home run, in which it is not.

The “normal” home run is vastly more common than the “inside-the-park” variety. Indeed, this sort of thing is really what most people think about when they think about home runs. The hitter hits the ball, and it lands very far away from home plate. Or, at least, far enough away that it lands over the outfield fence.

Normally, you can identify a home run pretty quickly— if the home team hits one, there’s usually some form of pyrotechnics or light shows, and if the visiting team hits one, you hear the unique sound of several thousand people pretending that they are not mad. As always, though, there are some rules to remember. Most, importantly, the ball has to be hit fair to go for a home run. Unlike other fly balls, this isn’t necessarily measured by where the ball lands, but where it is when it passes the fence. This is where the two big foul poles positoned in the outfield come in. The poles themselves are considered fair territory, so a ball that hits those poles will be a home run. If a ball passes the poles in fair territory, it’s a home run, even if the ball eventually lands in “foul” territory.

But what if a ball bounces off the fence and into the stands? Most of the time, this will also be a home run; different ballparks have different fences, and thus, different “ground rules” that dictate what happens when a ball hits various spots¹. For this reason, you will sometimes see runners unconcernedly running the bases as a ball hits of a wall, back into the field of play. Once the ball hits the right spot, it’s a home run even if it’s settling at the feet of the right fielder. Oh, and speaking of fielders, if a ball bounces off of a fielder who is trying to make a play, and then bounces over the outfield fence? That’s also a home run. So, uh, be careful out there, outfielders.

One last thing: for home runs, just because the ball is no longer in play, that doesn’t mean the runner is 100% protected from getting out. They still have to touch the bases, in order. If they manage not to, 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.

Once everything calms down after a home run, play resumes; the next batter comes up to bat²— although, unlike other base hits, a home run results in the bases being emptied.