Inning

In baseball, softball, and similar games, an inning is the basic unit of play. It has two parts called "top" and "bottom." In each part, one team takes turns hitting the ball while the other team tries to stop them. This continues until three players from the hitting team are out.

A baseball game usually has nine innings, and a softball game has seven. Sometimes, if the weather is bad or the game is tied at the end, the number of innings can change. The word "inning" is used differently in games like cricket and rounders, where they use the word innings for both singular and plural.

Gameplay

In baseball and similar games, each inning has two parts. The visiting team bats first, called the top of the inning, and the home team bats second, called the bottom of the inning. Each team takes turns batting until three outs are made. A usual baseball game has nine innings, while softball games have seven, but these can sometimes be shorter because of weather or other reasons.

If the game is tied after the last scheduled inning, it can go into extra innings until one team is ahead. In some leagues, like in Japan, a game can end in a tie after a certain number of innings. If the home team takes the lead in the bottom of an inning, the game ends right away. Games can also be stopped early if there is bad weather, and they might need to be played again from the start or counted as finished depending on the situation.

Terminology

When a half-inning ends, it is called "retiring the side". If all batters are out without getting to base, it is called a "one-two-three inning". We can count how many innings a pitcher is in using the innings pitched statistic.

In US English, people sometimes use baseball terms when they are in a tense situation. They might say, "it's the bottom of the ninth", meaning there isn’t much time left to change things.