Baseball in Teso College Aloet

Baseball is a well-represented game at Teso College, with a long history. It is a TCA tradition to participate in the Uganda Under-17 Baseball Competition, held in Mpigi District every year. A Teso College student, Akol Emmanuel, was selected to represent Uganda on the international level, playing on the Under-17 Baseball Team in Warsaw, Poland.

Read more about recent Teso College baseball games at the Hub.

The Game of Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball game with an international following. Most of the play is concentrated in and around four bases placed roughly 90 ft apart in a diamond shape at one end of a grassy field─this is known as the ‘infield‘. The ‘outfield‘ is the grassy area that extends up to 400 ft from the bases. The bases are numbered from ‘home‘ through ‘first‘, ‘second‘ and ‘third‘. There are two teams of nine players each that take turns hitting (batting) and throwing/fielding the ball.

The pitcher for the fielding team throws the ball towards the batter of the opposing team, who stands at home base. (The pitcher is a designated position in each team, but all team members may take a turn at bat.) He must throw the ball within a designated area, called the ‘strike zone‘. This is defined as the space above home plate and between the batter‘s knees and the midpoint of his torso. The batter attempts to hit the bat as far out into the field as possible so he can run around the bases in order in a counter-clockwise rotation until he reaches home base again. This is called a ‘home run‘.

The fielding team tries to catch the ball and throw it back to the infield and tag the runner or the base he is running towards. Then he will be ‘out‘. Once the batter has left home base he may stop at first or any of the succeeding bases if it seems like the fielding team may tag him. If the runner stops on the base before he is tagged he is ‘safe‘.

Once the batter has begun running the bases the next batter on his team takes a turn to hit the ball. When the ball has been hit out into the field again any players on any of the bases can continue running towards home. A player who has reached home base after running all the bases has scored a point, called a ‘run‘.

A batter or runner may be out in a number of ways. For instance, if a batter tries to hit the ball and misses, as long as the ball was in the strike zone, it counts as a ‘strike‘. Three strikes add up to an out.

Once three members of the batting team are out the teams change places. One turn at batting for both teams, beginning with the visiting team, constitutes an ‘inning‘. A game is composed of nine innings, and the team with the greater number of runs at the end of the game wins.

Teso College Aloet Baseball Teams 2016

Senior Team (Under 17)			Junior Team (Under 14)
	Name	Class	Name	Class
1	Ronald Ogulei (Captain)	4a	Philip Opio (Captain)	3a
2	Lazarus Ojula	4b	Fortunate Ocen	3A
3	Isaac Obukui	4A	Joshua Jalango	3A
4	Simon Engitu	4A	Godfrey Opio	3a
5	Allan Nabujere	4B	Denzel Wandega	5Sc II
6	Simon Opolot	5Sc II	Cuthbert Okella	3A
7	Patrick Etiang	5Sc I	Ronald Ebulu	3A
8	Messach Apet	3B	Nobert Omoding	3B
9	John Omule	6Sc I	Jeremiah Okella	3a
10	Jeremiah Okello	5Sc I	Hamis Malinga	3A
11	Samuel Okot	6Arts	Julius Oluka	3A
12	Daniel Ochom	3b	Jonathan Ogongiro	3a
13			Francis Anukur	3a