A batting cage is an enclosed cage for baseball players to practice the skill of batting. A view of the playing field at Busch Stadium II St. ... Batting has several meanings: In baseball, batting is the act of attempting to hit the ball thrown by the pitcher, in order to score runs. ...

It is an usually made of netting or a chain-link fence and rectangular in shape. A batter stands at one end of the cage, with a pitching machine (or less often a live pitcher) partway up the other end. The pitcher or pitching machine pitches baseballs to the batter, who hits them. Batter can have several meanings: In cooking, batter is a thick or thin mixture, usually made of a ground grain, a liquid, and a fat. ... A pitching machine is a machine that automatically pitches a baseball to a batter at different speeds and styles. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

The cage is used to keep the baseballs within a certain range so that they're easy to pick up and are not lost. Batting cages are often found indoors, or where space is limited.

The interior floor of a batting cage may be sloped, to automatically feed the baseballs back into the automatic pitching machine. The automatic pitching machines using sloped floors usually pitch out a synthetic baseball or softball, rather than an official leather-clad ball.

Commercial batting cages pitch with several different speeds, which can range from 30 (generally softball) to over 80 miles per hour.

Cricket nets, used by cricket batsmen are similar in purpose, but bowling machines are much less common than facing a live bowler (this reflects the fact that nearly half of the members of a cricket team are specialist bowlers, and therefore proportionately more bowling practice is needed in cricket than pitching practice in baseball). Cricket nets are practice nets used by batsmen and bowlers to warm up and/or improve their techniques. ... For the insect, see Cricket (insect). ... Cricket batsman A batsman in the sport of cricket is a player whose speciality in the game is batting. ... Darren Gough bowling A bowler in the sport of cricket is usually a player whose speciality is bowling. ...

External links

• BeatThePitch.com Provider of batting cages and accessories.

• BattingCageFinder.com Directory of batting cages in the United States.