In baseball, a runner is charged, and the fielders involved are credited, with a time caught stealing when the runner attempts to advance or lead off from one base to another without the ball being batted and then is tagged out by a fielder while making the attempt. A time caught stealing cannot be charged to a batter-runner, a runner who is still advancing as the direct result of reaching base.
More specifically, a time caught stealing is charged when:
- a runner, attempting a stolen base, is put out;
- a runner is caught in a rundown play while stealing, and is tagged out; or
- a runner, attempting a stolen base, is safe because a fielder is charged with an error on catching the ball, and in the judgment of the official scorer, the runner would have been out if the ball had been caught. (This official scoring is almost never made; an error is usually only charged if a bad throw or catch allows the runner to take an additional base, e.g., the runner attempts to steal second, the ball goes into the outfield, and the runner takes third as well. In such an instance the runner is credited with a steal of second, with the error accounting for the advance to third.)
Rickey Henderson is the all-time leader in getting caught stealing (335 times). The current active leader is Juan Pierre with 186 times caught (As of August 18, 2011)
Read more about Caught Stealing: Pickoffs, Wild Pitch/Passed Ball, Records
Famous quotes containing the words caught and/or stealing:
“I suffered for birds, for young rabbits caught in the mower,
My grief was not excessive.
For to come upon warblers in early May
Was to forget time and death:”
—Theodore Roethke (1908–1963)
“In the twentieth century, death terrifies men less than the absence of real life. All these dead, mechanized, specialized actions, stealing a little bit of life a thousand times a day until the mind and body are exhausted, until that death which is not the end of life but the final saturation with absence.”
—Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934)