Captain (baseball)

Rare card · No. 68274

In baseball, a captain is an honorary title sometimes given to a member of the team to acknowledge his leadership. Few Major League teams today have captains. In the early days of baseball, a captain was a player who was responsible for many of the functions now assumed by managers and coaches, such as preparing lineups, making decisions about strategy, and encouraging teamwork. In amateur or youth baseball, a manager or coach may appoint a team captain to assist in communicating with the players and to encourage teamwork and improvement. The official rules of Major League Baseball (MLB) only briefly mention the position of team captain. Official Baseball Rule 4.03 Comment (formerly Rule 4.01 Comment), which discusses the submission of a team's lineup card to the umpire, notes that obvious errors in the lineup should be brought to the attention of the team's manager or captain. Only a few major league teams have had captains in recent years, two examples being Adrián Beltré of the Texas...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Keith Allison on Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0