Goals
In general, batters try to get hits. However, their primary objective is to avoid making an out, and helping their team to score runs. They may draw a walk if they receive four pitches located outside the strike zone. In cases when there is a runner on third and fewer than two outs, they can attempt to hit a sacrifice fly to drive the runner in by allowing the runner on third to tag up and score. When there are fewer than two outs and runners on base, they can try to sacrifice bunt. They might even be hit by a pitch, reach on an error or—if first is empty or there are two outs—on a dropped third strike.
The defense attempts to get the batter out. The pitcher's main role in this is to throw the ball in such a way that he or she either strikes out or cannot hit it cleanly so that the defense can get him or her out.
Read more about this topic: Batting (baseball)
Famous quotes containing the word goals:
“If you really think about it, everything is wonderful in this world, everything except for our thoughts and deeds when we forget about the loftier goals of existence, about our human dignity.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Whoever sincerely believes that elevated and distant goals are as little use to man as a cow, that “all of our problems” come from such goals, is left to eat, drink, sleep, or, when he gets sick of that, to run up to a chest and smash his forehead on its corner.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“If people would forget about utopia! When rationalism destroyed heaven and decided to set it up here on earth, that most terrible of all goals entered human ambition. It was clear there’d be no end to what people would be made to suffer for it.”
—Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923)