Determining The Proper Batter
At any time, the proper batter is simply the player whose name follows the previous actual batter in the written batting order (at the start of the game, the #1 hitter is the proper batter, and in subsequent innings, the leadoff proper batter is the one who follows the last batter to complete a plate appearance in the last previous inning). Any batter's out-of-turn but completed plate appearance is legalized when a pitch is thrown to any subsequent batter on either team. Thus, in order to determine who is the proper batter at any given time, it is necessary only to consider the last two batters who have received a pitch--the last proper or legalized batter and the batter whose action will be nullified if found improper.
When an improper batter is legalized by a pitch to a subsequent batter, the written order does not change. The proper batter is then the next batter in the written order just after the newly-legalized improper batter, even if this causes one or more batters to be skipped. (If the proper batter is on base -- a situation that can happen due to his being a previous improper batter, now legalized -- he is skipped and the batting order goes to the next name on it.) Because the umpire and official scorer are not to comment on the batting order (outside of ruling on an appeal), the teams need to be vigilant about following the written order.
Read more about this topic: Batting Out Of Turn
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—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Our civilization has decided ... that determining the guilt or innocence of men is a thing too important to be trusted to trained men.... When it wants a library catalogued, or the solar system discovered, or any trifle of that kind, it uses up its specialists. But when it wishes anything done which is really serious, it collects twelve of the ordinary men standing round. The same thing was done, if I remember right, by the Founder of Christianity.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
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