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A Brief Description of Four-Bases

The inhabitants of Home (for that is all they called the continent they lived on; most had no concept of other landmasses across the apparently impenetrable ocean, or even that they were part of a larger planetary mass) did not have many things in common.

The ‘new intellectuals’ (as they were caustically called by some) of the coastal universities in Avillala proposed that all things could be explained with rationale and logic. The forest priests of Lingia did not share that view. Waldland was a country of industry while the people of its neighbor Sollevil lived under the stars and survived on bow and arrow. And Naueschen, well, Naueschen held secrets that its rulers were not prepared to divulge.

However, there was one thing that all on Home shared. Four-bases. Whether it be depictions of the sport on shards of pottery, or on the remnants of ancient tapestries, or carved into stone monuments, or painted on the broken-down walls of ancient settlements, as far back as history went, of whichever people, four-bases was a constant.

The rules varied from place to place but the premise remained the same: a batter and a striker (in some places called a pitcher), and four bases (typically in a diamond shape, though in some variations more circular), with the goal of the batting team to send as many runners around the four bases as possible, and the goal of the fielding team to stop that from happening.

In Penterham the game was played with nine players per side (elsewhere on the continent some used ten players: one behind home-base, four in the infield plus the striker, and four in the outfield), with a specially-designated player who batted in place of the striker, and the striker throwing from a raised mound of earth. Three strikes (either a swing and miss or if the ball passed over home-base at a height between the knees and armpits of the batter without coming into contact with the bat; some variations elsewhere needed four strikes thrown, and sometimes two) and a batter was out. Three outs and a round was completed. A game comprised of nine rounds per team, with some exceptions: if the score was tied after nine rounds the game continued until a winner was determined; if the home team, who always batted last, were ahead once the first half of the ninth round was completed there was no need to play the bottom of the round. Each batter who crossed home-base was worth one run, and if a batter struck the ball over the fence of the field that was adjudged as automatically worth all four bases, both for the batter and any who might already be on-base. The official term for this was a ‘home run,’ though many colloquialisms were used to capture the excitement of such an event.

While Penterham’s cities did often assemble their best players during summer for matches with teams from opposing cities, never before in record had there been a competition such as the one proposed by Nikolaj Kambeka.