Dragon27 wrote:Anyway, I don't know if hitting something out of the park is a good thing in baseball. Probably is (at least in some of the situations), if the idiom is used in this way. But I have no idea how baseball works. I've seen it in action in many american movies/shows, but it still remains a quite esoteric activity to me. People are throwing balls, hitting it, running around the field, and then mark some points in an arbitrary manner. They also switch roles from time to time. Sometimes it seems that they're just pretending to play a game.
The idiom at least paints a vivid picture: hitting something so hard that it flies out of some park. Combined with the usage (describing some excellent performance) it was enough to solidify the association for me.
The goal is for the batter to hit the ball, and then run around the bases before the opposing team retrieves the ball and catches you with it. If you hit it "out of the park" that means you hit it so far that the defending team can't possibly retrieve it, meaning that you automatically score (as do any of your teammates who are currently on base).
Usually, you won't be able to make it all the way around all four bases before the defending team catches the ball, so you have to stop on a base part way, and then wait for a team mate to hit the ball so you can continue running and hopefully finish making it around to score. A hit is called a "single", "double", "triple", etc. depending on how many bases you made it to before being forced to stop. If you make it around all four bases in a single hit, it's called a "home run" since you ran all the way around and returned to "home base" (the base where you start). Hitting it out of the park guarantees a home run for obvious reasons.
When a batter fails to hit the ball three times ("three strikes and you're out") or is caught by the defending players before making it safely to a base, they're "out". After three outs, the teams switch positions. The goal is to score as much as possible while you're on offense and prevent the other team from scoring while you're on defense.
Additionally, if a pitcher throws an illegal pitch four times (and the batter correctly recognizes that the pitches are illegal and declines to swing at them), they get to go to first base for free without hitting the ball, which is known as "walking", since they don't need to run. Sometimes a pitcher will deliberately walk a batter since it prevents them from potentially hitting a double, triple, home run, etc.