On October 7, 1892 — 10/7/1892 – The St. Louis Browns were playing in Cleveland against the Spiders when this puzzling one happened. We have found only a brief story that said with Cleveland ahead 8-3 in the fifth inning and it was starting to rain, the Spiders George Davis intentionally batted out of turn in order to make the third out of the inning quickly. The game ended after five innings because of the rain. There are a couple of reasons for it being puzzling. We don’t know if Cleveland was batting last since in those days the home teams sometimes elected to bat first so they could hit against the new ball in the first. If they were batting last, it was already an official game due to a rule revision for the 1892 season. The original 1876 rule required five full innings to be played for a game to count. However, the Spiders may not have known about the new rule. The batting out of turn rule in effect was the original one from 1876, and it said in effect that the improper batter would not be out until his plate appearance was completed. So a Cleveland hitter could have just swung and missed at the first three pitches to make a quick out. The umpire of the game was John Gaffney, who was quite experienced. However, perhaps he was not fully versed on the rule and ruled Davis out after a pitch had been thrown and maybe Davis pointed out that he was not the proper batter. We will try to get more information about the game.
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