As both the quality of the baseball and the weight of the baseball increased, the distance that players could throw the ball also increased. This allowed Doc Adams to be a type of cut-off man for the players in the outfield.Īs the game of baseball improved, so did the baseball itself. The solution to the Knickerbockers problem was to position another player, Doc Adams, in between the outfielder and the players positioned at the bases. When baseball was first being played, the ball was extremely light and outfielders were not able to throw the ball very far. According to the Official Historian for Major League Baseball, John Thorn, Doc Adams created the shortstop position when playing for the Knickerbockers in 1849 or 1850. The shortstop position is not played in the same spot today as it was when it was first created. Now when you’re marking down a 6-4-3 double play in the books you’ll know why this sequence of numbers begins with a 6 instead of another number, but let’s take a deeper look into the history of the shortstop position. When the quality of baseballs improved, the shortstop became an infielder and remained as the 6th position. With how light the baseballs were, outfielders needed a cut-off man between the outfield and the infield. Why is shortstop number 6? The shortstop is the sixth position because they were originally a shallow outfielder. I pulled out my phone and started doing some research. As I was marking down a “6-3” out for the last play of the inning I got to thinking, why is shortstop considered the 6th position in the infield? It didn’t seem to make sense – the positions in the infield were numbered from first base to third base, except shortstop was number 6 while third base was number 5. In one of my recent baseball games, I was in charge of keeping track of the book for an inning.
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