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silveradept[This is part of a series exploring the Baseball Tarot. If you would like to prompt for a part of the game or a card from the deck, there's still plenty of space. Leave a comment with a prompt. All other comments are still welcome, of course.]
There are four main calls from the umpire in baseball - ball, strike, out, safe. Evenly balanced between helping the defense and helping the offense, these calls drive the game of baseball forward. Safe helps the offense, and is a call delivered by spreading the arms out from the chest, palms down, usually in a quick motion, and then holding that pose until everyone understands the call or a request for time is granted.
Safe indicates that the batter or runner has successfully and legally arrived at the base they are attempting to reach, whether by batted ball, attempted steal, retreat to beat a pickoff throw, or through the use of tag-avoidance measures designed to allow them to make contact with a base and deny the defense their body for touching. Generally, to be safe, a part of the body of the runner must be in contact with the intended base before the ball arrives to that base and a tag or force is applied. Some part of the body must also remain in contact with the base (excepting home plate) while a tag is applied - woe to those runners who overslide their bases, as any break in the contact results in the runner being out if there is a tag applied to them.
The safe gesture, like the out gesture, is designed to be visible from very far away, and so has developed into the method by which an umpire indicates a no answer to questions. This is most commonly seen in appeals made from home plate to ask whether a batter's partial swing was complete enough to be called an attempted swing, and therefore a strike. Other appeals, such as whether a runner legally touched a base, are also usually answered in this manner.
Safe is usually a gratifying call to the offense, an indication of success in their difficult endeavors. When it shows up in a reading, it's always an indication that your efforts have succeeded. There are, however, varying degrees of success, and all of them are indicated by the safe call without distinction. Just barely getting there (or back) may earn you a talking-to from the coaches or the manager about the need to play the game smarter and to leave yourself more room for safety, or the need to train harder so that you can go faster and not have so many close plays. How you get there may earn you congratulations if your method was particularly effective at avoiding the defense. In any case, safe is safe, but the context around it will need to be analyzed to figure out whether your "playing it safe" is something to be rewarded and replicated, or whether it's being frowned upon for being too conservative and you need to open up your game so as to have the possibility of scoring more runs.
There are four main calls from the umpire in baseball - ball, strike, out, safe. Evenly balanced between helping the defense and helping the offense, these calls drive the game of baseball forward. Safe helps the offense, and is a call delivered by spreading the arms out from the chest, palms down, usually in a quick motion, and then holding that pose until everyone understands the call or a request for time is granted.
Safe indicates that the batter or runner has successfully and legally arrived at the base they are attempting to reach, whether by batted ball, attempted steal, retreat to beat a pickoff throw, or through the use of tag-avoidance measures designed to allow them to make contact with a base and deny the defense their body for touching. Generally, to be safe, a part of the body of the runner must be in contact with the intended base before the ball arrives to that base and a tag or force is applied. Some part of the body must also remain in contact with the base (excepting home plate) while a tag is applied - woe to those runners who overslide their bases, as any break in the contact results in the runner being out if there is a tag applied to them.
The safe gesture, like the out gesture, is designed to be visible from very far away, and so has developed into the method by which an umpire indicates a no answer to questions. This is most commonly seen in appeals made from home plate to ask whether a batter's partial swing was complete enough to be called an attempted swing, and therefore a strike. Other appeals, such as whether a runner legally touched a base, are also usually answered in this manner.
Safe is usually a gratifying call to the offense, an indication of success in their difficult endeavors. When it shows up in a reading, it's always an indication that your efforts have succeeded. There are, however, varying degrees of success, and all of them are indicated by the safe call without distinction. Just barely getting there (or back) may earn you a talking-to from the coaches or the manager about the need to play the game smarter and to leave yourself more room for safety, or the need to train harder so that you can go faster and not have so many close plays. How you get there may earn you congratulations if your method was particularly effective at avoiding the defense. In any case, safe is safe, but the context around it will need to be analyzed to figure out whether your "playing it safe" is something to be rewarded and replicated, or whether it's being frowned upon for being too conservative and you need to open up your game so as to have the possibility of scoring more runs.
