Bunt (baseball)
To bunt, the batter loosely holds the bat in front of home plate and intentionally taps the ball into play.
A properly executed bunt will create weak contact with the ball and/or strategically direct it, forcing the infielders to make a difficult defensive play to record an out.
The bunt is typically executed by the batter turning his body toward the pitcher and sliding one hand up the barrel of the bat to help steady it.
Depending on the situation, the batter might square up either before the pitcher winds up, or as the pitched ball approaches the plate.
The sacrifice bunt is most often used in close, low-scoring games, and it is usually performed by weaker hitters.
Alternatively, in the lower-risk safety squeeze, the runner on third waits for the ball to be bunted before breaking for home.
It is not a true bunt, and if the scorer judges that the batter intended to hit the ball, it cannot be counted as a sacrifice.
This special exception applies only to true bunts, not on any bunt-like contacts that might occur during a full swing or check-swing.
It is not known when the bunt was introduced; the earliest known reference to a bunt-like hit appears in the account of a game played in 1864 between the junior squads ("muffins") of the Brooklyn Excelsior and Enterprise clubs: "The feature of the play was the batting of Prof. Bassler of the Enterprise team...Being an original of the first water, he adopted an original theory in reference to batting, which we are obliged to confess is not of the most striking character.
"[9] But the batting technique now known as the bunt was almost certainly perfected by Dickey Pearce, one of baseball's early stars.
[10] During periods of pitching dominance, for example, during the dead-ball era or the 1960s, bunting was an important offensive weapon.
[11] Teams following the "Moneyball" school of baseball thought (such as the Oakland Athletics, the Boston Red Sox, and the 2004–2005 Los Angeles Dodgers) have shown a tendency to shun the sacrifice bunt almost entirely.
