The Universe of Discourse

Baseball on the Moon

We want to adapt baseball to be played on the moon. Is there any way to make it work?

My first impression is: no, for several reasons.

The pitched ball will go a little faster (no air resistance) but breaking balls are impossible (ditto). So the batter will find it easier to get a solid hit. We can't fix this by moving the plate closer to the pitcher's rubber; that would expose both batter and pitcher to uncceptable danger. I think we also can't fix it by making the plate much wider.

Once the batter hits the ball, it will go a long long way, six times as far as a batted ball on Earth. In order for every hit to not be a home run, the outfield fence will have to be about six times as far way, so the outfield will be !!36!! times as large. I don't think the outfielders can move six times as fast to catch up to it. Perhaps if there were 100 outfielders instead of only three?

Fielding the ball will be more difficult. Note that even though the vacuum prevents the pitch from breaking, the batted ball can still take unexpected hops off the ground.

Having gotten hold of the ball, the outfielder will then need to throw it back to the infield. They will be able to throw it that far, but they probably won't be able do it accurately enough for the receiving fielder to make the play at the base. More likely the outfielder will throw it wild.

I don't think this can be easily salvaged. People do love home runs, but I don't think they would love this. Games are too long already.

Well, here's a thought. What if instead of four bases, arranged in a !!90!!-foot square, we had, I don't know, eight or ten, maybe !!200!! or !!300!! feet apart? More opportunities for outs on the basepaths, and also the middle bases would not be so far from the outfield. Instead of throwing directly to the infield, the outfielders would have a relay system where one outfielder would throw to another that was farther in, and perhaps one more, before reaching the infield. That might be pretty cool.

I think it's not easy to run fast on the Moon. On the Earth, a runner's feet are pushing aganst the ground many times each second. On the Moon, the runner is taking big leaps. They may only get in one-sixth as many steps over the same distance, which would give them much less opportunity to convert muscle energy into velocity. (Somewhat countervailing, though: no air resistance.) Runners would have to train specially to be able to leap accurately to the bases. Under standard rules, a runner who overshoots the base will land off the basepaths and be automatically out.

So we might expect to see the runner bounding toward first base. Then one of the thirty or so far-left fielders would get the ball, relay it to the middle-left fielder and then the near-left fielder who would make the throw back to first. The throw would be inaccurate because it has to traverse a very large infield, and the first baseman would have to go chasing after it and pick it up from foul territory. He can't get back to first base quickly enough, but that's okay, the pitcher has bounded over from the mound and is waiting near first base to make the force play. Maybe the runner isn't there yet because one of his leaps was too long and to take another he has to jump high into the air and come down again.

It would work better than Quiddich, anyway.

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