Word.ws English Dictionary

call balls and strikes

call balls and strikes verb: to act as a home plate umpire.

Verb

call balls and strikes (third-person singular simple present calls balls and strikes, present participle calling balls and strikes, simple past and past participle called balls and strikes)

  1. (US) To act as a home plate umpire.
    • The San Rafael Pacifics and Vallejo Admirals, two independent (not major league-affiliated) minor league teams, recently played two games using a computer system, rather than the home plate umpire, to call balls and strikes.2015 August 10, Alex Shultz, “Rise of the machines? Baseball weighs use of automated strike zone”, in LA Times
  2. (US, broadly) To act impartially.
    • Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot said Thursday she wants and expects Inspector General Joe Ferguson to “call balls and strikes” during her administration and sees no reason their friendship would conflict with his role as a city watchdog.2019 May 13, Fran Spielman, “Watchdog should stay, call ‘balls and strikes’ despite our friendship: Lightfoot”, in Chicago Sun-Times

Forms of call balls and strikes

third-person singular presentcalls balls and strikes
present participlecalling balls and strikes
past participlecalled balls and strikes
pastcalled balls and strikes

Questions about call balls and strikes

What does call balls and strikes mean?
Call balls and strikes means to act as a home plate umpire.
What part of speech is call balls and strikes?
Call balls and strikes is a verb.
What is the past tense of call balls and strikes?
The past tense of call balls and strikes is called balls and strikes.

Words near call balls and strikes in the dictionary

  1. call and response
  2. call around
  3. call away
  4. call back
  5. call backs
  6. call balls and strikes
  7. call bell
  8. call bird
  9. call birds
  10. call box
  11. call boxes

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: call balls and strikes (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-call balls and strikes.wav.

Cite this entry: “call balls and strikes.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/call_balls_and_strikes. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.