With baseball, it’s simple. There’s no mystery to what happens on the field because everything has a label — full count, earned run, perfect game — and there’s a certain amount of comfort in this terminology. There’s no room for confusion and Ryan wishes now that everything could be so straightforward.
~Jennifer E. Smith, The Comeback Season
Thank goodness for the balk! Still can’t figure that one out or the foul pole. As Jon Miller pointed out, why isn’t it called the fair pole?
Funny, I had someone point that out to me the other day. If the ball hits it, it’s fair. So yeah, intuitively, that would make more sense.