Last night I went to a college baseball game with a friend, whose son is the rightfielder for one of the teams. I saw an occurrence that I had never seen before in a baseball game.

With one out in the bottom of the sixth and a runner on first, a batter for our team came to the plate. The pitch sequence was: called strike, ball, foul, swinging strike. Strikeout for out #2? The scoreboard operator thought so and registered two out and cleared the scoreboard count. But the umpire never declared him out and the batter stayed in the box. The opposing dugout never said a word and the batter got a fresh count whereupon he struck out...again. The batter had a sheepish grin as he walked to the dugout and muttered, "That's embarrassing."

Anyway the opposing team came off the field, thinking there were three outs. I knew that even though the batter struck out twice, it could not count for two outs because he was only declared out once. You can't be declared out twice in one at bat. Also, because the opposing team never petitioned the umpire to have the batter out after the first third strike (or any subsequent strike in the at bat), they waived their right to have him declared out prior to the sixth strike.

After a discussion the opposing team had to take the field again to face another batter.