Most sports are spaced out in easy to remember measurements. Football is played in quarters. Basketball is played in either halves or quarters. Soccer is played in halves.
Baseball and softball stand out. By looking at the word, “inning,” it is impossible to glean how long a game is going to be. You can’t have five quarters in game. No one is going to play just one half. But an inning? That’s not a numeric measurement.
The word “inning” itself has no numeric roots in its etymology. The word dates back to the Old English word, “innung,” which means “a taking in, a putting in,” per the Online Etymology Dictionary. It was not used to describe a team’s turn in an event until 1735 and has its roots in cricket.
That’s why it’s possible to say that not every sport has the same number of innings. Baseball, at the highest levels of college and professional ranks, has nine innings. High school varsity baseball has only seven innings.
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