The History of Baseball's Most Mysterious Rule 

If a pitcher does not balk in 15 years, and does so 3x in a single at-bat, thats not the pitcher balking, thats an ump calling balks wrong. Literally statistically certain the ump is at fault here.

This video committed a balk. I'm gonna have to ask you to take it down.

If it happens to your team, it isn’t not a balk. If it happens to the other team, it’s a balk. That’s how it works.

Was at that Mets and marlins game. Nothing about it made sense and is the main reason I want the rule change, I watch a ton of baseball and played a lot of it and had no idea why he was being called for balks.

Guys, it's real simple, a balk is when the pitcher

Here’s my idea. Umps can call balks whenever they want, regardless of what’s happening on the field, BUT they have to impersonate a chicken while doing so.

The thing with Bleier’s Balk thing is that they probably were Balks by regular definition. However, the way the official rule book reads is that a Balk is an illegal motion meant to deceive the Baserunners (a batter is also a baserunner). If a pitcher has been pitching like that for 15 years, then it’s expected by all the players, so it’s not deceitful. Therefor it’s not a Balk by official rule. It was honestly just the Ump not understanding his role and being too literal. I just don’t see how he would call that a Balk, but Nestor Cortez wasn’t called for a Balk with his showdown against Ohtani. Which was absolutely a Balk by official definition. The Umpire knew it was a head game and simply just stopped the delivery, called time and declared it a non-pitch.

3:58 that is a photo of the 1991 World Series winning Twins since a Braves player is in the background, not from 1987 when they were playing the Cardinals.

Every Andy Pettitte pick off move was fishy at best, and a balk at worst. Meanwhile, Bleier got rung up more in one inning than I ever saw Pettitte get nailed.

The one balk that sticks out to me was the Braves and Brewers game in 2000 where Fernando Lunard was slightly out of the box catching for Maddux. It was so odd to me how anal the HP umpire was to the letter of the law over a rule that was very seldom enforced

Always a good day when you upload!! I wouldn’t mind the videos a lil longer too!! Either way great vid like always!!!

This topic always makes me think of my first year of Babe Ruth League (for those that don't know- it is after Little League, but before Legion and High School. Legion ball was team's that had sponsorships, travelled to tourneys, etc. Kids in Babe Ruth ball were aged 13-15, usually). Little League was always pretty relaxed with balks. Of course EVERYone got to play in that league, too. Babe Ruth was a step up. Everyone in that league was either pretty good, or had been playing long enough that they were known in the area- or both. That season, especially the first month, we learned about balks- or, REALLY learned anyway. We learned about attention to detail, repetition, and the language of a rule. The Blue's were brutally meticulous. I bet, nearly every team's starting pitchers had at least 6-10 balks in their first couple of starts. It was absolutely maddening. But, it was lesson's well learned, as the local high schools in my county were well-known to produce good pitching. By the time we got to high-school and Legion ball, we were well oiled machines. Rarely, if ever, balked; mechanically sound; with low walk numbers throughout the county. It took a little bit, but it paid dividends.

4:40 The A's did commit 76 balks that season, but how did you get to the other figure? If everyone else had 63 balks, there would have been 139 balks in total that season (76+63). There have been 924 balks.

This makes me think of an old Verlander clip in Oakland where his left foot stepped towards first, but then he just chucked the ball towards home plate without a windup and before the batter was ready. Can anyone find that for me?

Still have no idea what a balk is

Or you could just not be Ryne Stanek..or richard Bleier

"I don't call balks because I don't know the rule" --Attributed to Hall of Fame umpire Doug Harvey

Meanwhile....Besides Arraez, there might be only a couple hitters to avg .300. Maybe Freeman, Acuna...Bichette? At the time of writing theres only 10 at 300 or better. Pitching is dominant.

Meanwhile in the NBA they're literally doing globetrotter tricks. And the refs are like "you can't expect me to call every travel"

At 7:37, that was as clear of a balk as you'll ever see and should've had all 4 umps call it simultaneously

I think the Uncaught Third Strike Rule is also very mysterious.

A balk is actually not an automatic dead ball. It’s just that when everyone hears the ump yell “that’s a balk” they stop what they’re doing. But if the pitcher balked, continued their pitch, and the batter homered, the homer would stand.

Somewhere, former MLB umpire Bob Davidson( AKA Balking Bob ) was applauding Bleir being called for three bogus balks. I'd call for reform to the rule, but, how to reform is the question, and been hashed and rehashed for years. Sadly, nothing will change, save getting rid of the " Balking Bobs ". Oh wait, Angel Hernandez and CB Bucknor are still employed, never mind...

What I learned today: Just get rid of the balk since nobody knows what a balk is.

Damn why’d y’all have to do Patrick Corbin like that

"sees video title" I wonder if this is about balks

God forbid a pitcher breathes before throwing a pitch or even being set 😂

I know its not related to the video but I sent Richard Bleier a DM last season and he took time out of his busy day to respond so he's alright in my book, even if he is mostly known for the Balks incident

I balked 7 times watching this video.

How about a video on Jhoan Duran. He's setting records left and right!

Nice Corbin burn

6:00 This is so cool. I was at that game in person lol

Golden era, these pitching guys hardly throw like they used to.

i'm only one minute 30 seconds in but i had to come to the comments to talk about the umpire that called those 3 balks. i just learned about this event about a week ago because this guy John Tumpane is still terrorizing major leaguers today lol. he is WAYYY too quick to eject and pretty much any game ive watched with him in it there is at least one baffling call made by him.

Of course its a balk video

If a pitcher is allowed to use the same motion for his entire career, then is called 3 times in one game, thats on the league and that umpire, not the pitcher

Talks about the ‘87 twins and then shows the ‘91 twins lol

7:20 Tyler Rogers??

That was funny 🐔

That’s not Trevor Rogers

Draw a line on the mound at 20 degrees that lefties can't step on. 45 is far to lenient and judgement is arbitrary due to the lack of a visible marker.

They will call a ticky tak nonsense balk, but let guys like Nestor Cortez do all sorts of nonsense during his delivery.

Hey man just a heads up, looks like you got some faulty info here; the league total balks in 1988 was 924, i assume you just searched total balks in 1998 which google spits out "While 2020 was a shortened season, the 1988 Athletics had more balks (76) in 1,489 innings than all 30 teams had combined (63). The A"s had a balk every other game for nearly the entire 1988 season, and they still won the American League pennant" so i can see how you might have missed/misunderstood what it was saying. Hope this wont make you take the vid down, its awesome otherwise!

This… wasn’t the history of the balk… nor once did you show a balk just when it was called.

13% of this video is ad

Yea, if they are going to add a pitch clock and bigger bases then why do they need to be even more strict about balking

Aww elon hurt his feelings

Wahhhhhh. Meany allows differing opinions. Wahhhhh😢

Man twitter was a dumb name for a dumb product, and dumb people get upset about it for some dumb reason.

Second?

FIRTS

corrupt and incompetent officiating......

It’s still called Twitter. X is the company that has a product called Twitter. Come on, guys.

John Tumpane loves the attention and it's the only way he can get it and toss players. He needs to be banned from baseball.