Miller: Why runs, hits, errors should no longer define baseball … but still does
From Sam Miller at ESPN.com on April 11, 2020:
What is the smallest, oddest, most omnipresent detail about baseball that we take totally for granted? Is it that there is a front of the batter’s box to keep batters from moving suicidally closer to the pitcher? Is it that balls that hit the foul pole are deemed fair, regardless of which side of the pole they actually pass? Is it that the players wear pants that require belts? That the manager, generally an older man sitting in the shade, wears a ballcap?
I think the very smallest and most omnipresent is actually the last thing we saw in the last shot of the last baseball broadcast that mattered.
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It’s the Runs/Hits/Errors box, which we’ll refer to going forward as The R/H/E. The R/H/E appears on every major league scoreboard, above every box score of every game on Baseball Reference, on every television graphic going into and coming out of every commercial break. Even on the radio, where there is no visual component, the broadcasters generally read the R/H/E sequence multiple times per game, and sum up every inning by its Rs, Hs and Es.
Read the full article here: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/29006022/why-runs-hits-errors-no-longer-define-baseball-does
Originally published: April 13, 2020. Last Updated: April 13, 2020.