OT: How well do you know MLB rules (Quiz)?

Submitted by Space Coyote on

http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/quiz/_/id/4979/do-know-mlb-rules#top

Interesting quiz for the baseball guys out there. I actually did better than I thought I was going to once I completed it. Guessed on about 70% of them, and oddly enough got the "difficult" ones correct and the "easy" ones wrong. Pretty tough quiz.

And before you hozers turn this into a weiner measuring contest: I got an 6/10... just a little above average, because that's what we all say...

PS. If someone could tell me how to correctly spell "hozers", I would appreciate it. Neither Google nor Word knew what I was talking about, because I assume they are probably stupid. TIA.

UMgradMSUdad

June 19th, 2013 at 8:52 AM ^

I scored the same, and I believe every wrong response I gave, more than half of the quiz takers also got wrong (at the end, they show which ones you got correct/wrong with a brief expanation and percentage of responses for each question).  So, yeah, to most people, some of the rules are ridiculous.  If I had just followed George Costanza's reasoning and had just done the opposite of what seemed logical, I would have scored 70%.

DH16

June 19th, 2013 at 8:56 AM ^

Got all of them right except for the balk one. I umpire Little League, which doesn't have balks, so I guess that's my excuse.



Funny thing is, I'm pretty sure all of these have actually happened in a game. I've watched a lot of baseball so I was able to remember the situations.

Allin4Blue

June 19th, 2013 at 9:01 AM ^

Wow I definitely learned some things.  I didn't know a bunt was not included in the infield fly rule. Also, I thought a Balk was a dead ball play as well as catcher's interference.  I was lucky because I guessed on a couple as well.

DH16

June 19th, 2013 at 9:02 AM ^

I guess it's just rare we see a balk AND a delivered pitch at all, cause usually it's on a pick off move and the ump calls it before delivery. The catcher's interference one follows the same logic: how many times can you hit the catchers mitt AND hit the ball? Although I've seen that before.

MGoBender

June 19th, 2013 at 10:23 AM ^

All of them.  It's a pre-requisite of getting to the show.  There was a good article a few years back about a minor league umpiring camp.  The writer of the article participated in it and discussed the insane rules discussions they have.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=caple_jim&id=6161…

In camps and clinics I went to they would throw situations like this quiz has and discuss them.  We would debate and people would cite not only rule numbers/articles/clauses but even the page number of the rule book it was on.  And these were high school/JUCO officials. 

In fact, this year was the first time I can ever remember, in any sport, a rule being misapplied by officials when those umpires allowed two relief pitcher substitutions without a pitcher facing a batter.

JamieH

June 19th, 2013 at 12:40 PM ^

Given that the MLB umps earlier this year didn't even know that a pitcher is required to face at least one batter before being replaced (except in cases of injury or ejection), a long-time rule that pretty much EVERYONE knows and is an integral part of baseball strategy, I guarantee that not "all of them" would score 10 of 10 on this test that contained much much harder questions.

Space Coyote

June 19th, 2013 at 9:05 AM ^

Google verified. Now why can't it correct hozer to hoser I don't understand. In my opinion, that's a major problem. They should stick an intern on it, tell them to fix that problem before all our customers switch to Bing (and I'm not talking about that Owen Wilson movie that just came out).

mGrowOld

June 19th, 2013 at 9:18 AM ^

I missed this one unfortunately....

"Ryan Braun strides up the plate with a man on first and has to wait three and half minutes for the pitcher to look at first, shake off the signs from the catcher, scratch his head, rub the ball, look back at first, step off the mound, talk to the catcher and look back to first base before delivering the first pitch which Bruan fouls off."  

"Will Braun need to return to the bench and go through another HGH cycle before the next pitch or will his current metabolic dosage be sufficient?"

* Additional dose

* Current dosage sufficient

 

falco_alba15

June 19th, 2013 at 9:52 AM ^

But I work in a Sports Information department, and I've played and coached many years. It's been my job to know these things for a while. The situations were good ones, though.

Westside Wolverine

June 19th, 2013 at 9:58 AM ^

I find it interesting that the majority was wrong on almost every question. I wonder what the majority would have scored in the '50s or'60s. If this were a football rules quiz I think the majority would get at least eight out of ten correct. By the way 6/10.

LSAClassOf2000

June 19th, 2013 at 10:19 AM ^

7 / 10 with a few lucky guesses based on my kneejerk feeling about the situation, so I don't know if  that means a fair implicit understanding of the rulebook or not. Probably not, and I played in various non-descript leagues for some time. Missed the question about the manager crossing the foul line twice in the same at-bat, and it might have been one of the more obvious ones too - I can't recall ever seeing it happen honestly.