Charging the mound etiquette, not to mention dangerous, for the batter to charge the mound with a bat). Though serious injuries have occurred from charging in the past, usually fights are either broken up or joined by all other players so the conflict turns into posturing and name-calling; in baseball parlance, this is known as a rhubarb. Charging the mound is typically about responding to an indignity rather than an attempt to injure the pitcher. There is long-standing etiquette in baseball regarding what is an acceptable offense to warrant a beaning, and there are similar "unwritten rules" for charging in response to being
Origins of baseball put the batter-runner out when liable ("liable [to be put out]" is the baseball term for unsafe). The game of "cat" (or ""cat-ball"") had many variations but usually there was a pitcher, a catcher, a batter and fielders, but there were no sides (and often no bases to run). Often, as in English tip-cat, there was no pitcher and the "cat" was not a ball but an oblong wooden object, roughly football-shaped, which could be flipped into the air by striking one end, or simply a short stick which could be placed over a hole or stone and similarly flipped