Ask Mike: Why is a strike out a “K”?
Hey Guys,
Baseball is the sport of choice for stat nerds. There are home runs (HR), earned run averages (ERA), runs batted in (RBIs), and, of course, strikeouts (K). But hold up — why are strikeouts abbreviated with a “K” instead of “S”? Here’s the scoop.
According to legend, the credit goes to an old school sports writer named Henry Chadwick. Apparently, Chadwick used “K” for a strikeout because the letter “K” is the last letter of the word “struck.”
Why didn’t he just use “S”? Good question. According to The Straight Dope, it’s because Chadwick had already used the “S” as shorthand for sacrifice hits. So, he went with “K.”
Chadwick, a respected sportswriter, was largely responsible for creating much of the shorthand that baseball fans use on scorecards. You know how during a double play the announcers will say something like, “That was a 6-4-3″? That’s due to Chadwick, who came up with the system used to number the fielders. A shortstop is “6,” a second baseman is “4,” a first baseman is “3,” and so on. That’s still in use today.
Chadwick died in 1908 and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame posthumously in 1938. According to the Hall, Chadwick wrote the first hard-cover book on baseball ever.
Thanks for reading and let’s play ball,
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you should also mention that a “k” is for a batter that struck out swinging….
but if you see a backwards k or a “ʞ” then it means the batter struck out without swinging…so the umpire called strike 3
the S and the O got confused with other states
like “S” for stolen bases or just your regular “O” for outs
so “K” was the bese way to keep it sperated from other stats
Stolen bases in SB not S
K are for pitchers getting strikeouts, and SO is for batters getting struck out, so they don’t want to mix up the batting stats with the pitching stats.
The way I first heard it (which, as it turned out, was wrong, but still helps to remember it) was that just as it takes three strokes of a pen to write a K, it also takes three strikes to strike a batter out.
WOW!!! That’s very interesting and informative!!! Thanks for teaching me something!!!
This is all a bit confusing coming from a hockey fan
Thanks for the knowledge Mike, interesting fact about Mr. Chadwick.
they should modify the K stat with a number next to it for how many pitches were thrown
I always was under the impression that “K” stood for STEEEERRRYYYYYKKKKKK !!!!!.HA,HA…Very imformative, thanks..
In the scoring system I use, I write KS if the batter struck out swinging, and KC if he was called out on strikes.
The way I heard it was “S’ is for saves then K the middle of strikeout is the letter in the word strikeout. Then on highlights you ill see a normal and backward K. The normal K is when the batter strikeout looking. the backward K is when the batter strikeouts when the batter is swinging. you also have SHO which is for Shutouts.
Henry Chadwick was the father of baseball stats and game recording. He chose S for sacrifice and had to use something else for Strikeout/Struck out. He chose K in Struck.
I think its a system so a player that did so called good at batting 300 for the year can get another 10 million raise. Yeahhh 300 in baseball sounds good,
but they failed 7 other times. Not many sports will let you fail 70% of the time and pay you 10 million a year.!!
No one has mentioned that the K is short for KO or knockout from boxing slang. This is the logical link to the use of K by Chadwick for strikeout.
The K for a strikeout (originally) and a single strike, now, began in the 19teens when batters were routinely refered to as being “knocked out” by the 3rd strike. It has evolved, of course and now is the symbol for a strike, not just a strikeout. Earliest I found was in 1916. Sorry, don’t remember more specific as to date or teams
its a “k” because it is like a knockout or “KO”.
wow!!!!!!!!!!!
All The Best
Good information Mike thanks for it…May god continuously recharged you with new energies to share more… and more…and more… good informative articles to share with us…ha ha….good wishes.
WRONG! He made it a K because the S was taken for a SINGLE. And it is a Backwards K for a strikeout while taking the third strike.
Baseball has an interesting story for alphabetic shorthand used in statistics. Singles are normally H for Hit, with 2B, 3B and HR for doubles, triples, and home runs, respectively. S for Sacrifice and SF for Sac Fly make sense, as does SB for stolen base or CS for picked off on an attempted steal; I presumed the K for strikeout to mean an “at-bat killed,” whether the batter goes down looking an in-the-strike-zone pitch or swinging and missing the ball.
I read this in a book a couple years back and the topic actually comes up quite often. A nice fun fact that’s not very well known.
thanks as I baseball fan i knew the K but did not know why and its origins Thanks a lot
Some things never change, sportswriters are still strange folks and no one can make out their gibberish.
My BF is the major sports fanatic, while I am not but we both enjoyed the info. Thanks so much
Oooooh I think Jakob might of got u on that one Mike but it was still a damn good answer. Jakob u madman I had forgotten all about the backwards K. Nice one!
The term ‘k’ was first regulated by Henry Chadwick in 1850′s. It was derived from the word struck with ‘k’ as its last letter.
While this bit of information doesn’t address the “K” issue,it’s still a throw-back item of interest.The Home-plate umpire will throw his arm,on the side opposite the batter after every strike.The reason?A long time ago,there was a deaf ballplayer,so the umps came up with the arm out to the side,on strikes,so it could be seen by the player.A bit of quirkiness that continues to this day!
Okay so what you’re saying is that 3 k’s and you’re out “KKK” isn’t that racist?
Baseball- The only sport where the stats are more interesting than the game 8-P
What about Balfour? Will he walk?
no it doesn,t but take it from me as a kid i did it every day, guess what i made my knuckles very big i can tell by putting a ring over them the knuckle may be a 11 the ring size is a 9 so knuckles get bigger over time when u pop them or crack them try to slow down and stop it was a habit hard to stop but i di but to late in life..
hope that helps
Bob