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