Rules Of Baseball: The Pitcher’s Plate

Baseball Rules:
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The pitcher’s mound is to be ten inches higher than home plate and the base lines, and is to have a pitch of one inch per foot for the first six feet from the point six inches from the rubber toward the plate.

The familiar pitcher’s mound didn’t get that way overnight. For much of the nineteenth century, pitchers were required to pitch from a “box,” a rectangular space marked on the field. The box changed in size a number of times (at its largest, it was 4 by 12 feet, and it gradually shrank to 4 by 5 1/2 feet in 1866 and 1887, respectively). It didn’t have the familiar pitcher’s rubber until 1890, and even after the rubber was added, the “box” remained until 1893. In 1895, the rubber, which had been twelve by four inches, was enlarged to its present size of twenty-four by six inches.

The distance of the mound from home also changed, moving from forty-five feet to fifty and eventually to the present sixty feet, six inches. That distance is measured from the front edge of the rubber to the facing side of the plate.

baseball pitcher's plate