I am a casual baseball fan, and by that I mean exclusively watching through Jomboy breakdown videos.
In a recent video Manager WANTS a balk to be called, a breakdown, he starts off with saying:
We've got another balk breakdown. "Did he balk?" "Did he not balk?" "What's a balk?" "What are all these rules?"
I'm exactly in line with these exclamations - I'm not even sure what a balk is. Something to do with actions the pitcher isn't allowed to do before or during a pitch?
In the video, the play involves the pitcher stepping behind the plate, chasing after a runner, and then a bunch of passes in an attempt to tag the runner. After the play finishes, the opposing coach exclaims, "He balked!" seemingly in an attempt to invalidate the tag.
I searched for "balk" on YouTube and came up with this discussion of another play What constitutes a balk? where they explain what constitutes a balk, but they talk about terms like breaking hands, clearing the rubber, and overall this seems like a more refined discussion once you already understand what a balk is.
In a way that a casual baseball fan could appreciate, what is a balk? When would a pitcher want to balk? When would a pitcher want to avoid a balk?
If I can take it a step further, what motivated the balk rule in baseball - what kind of behavior is it trying to prevent?
