In the umpire's opinion, the fielder must have the ball in hand and off the ground to constitute possession. Players do not snatch balls out of the air. Many attempts have been made to catch an air ball, but in the N.B.B.A.'s history, there has been only four documented cases of a hit ball being caught in the air. Good defensive players learn to use their bodies and the ground to block and trap hit balls, and then pick up the beeping sphere and display it for the umpire's call. Because most fielding is done in this manner, flat grassy areas, free of trees and bushes, make the best beep baseball fields.
Many teams keep individual statistics on their players.
Good hitting teams may have several players with batting averages of .500 or above. Players openly admit they enjoy the thrill of heftily swinging at a pitched ball and making solid contact and then charging down the base path to score a run. But, they absolutely love the exhilarating feeling of diving off to one side or the other to cleanly field a hit ball and make an out. Even the most modest players are all too willing to graphically describe the put-outs they made. Beep baseball has evolved into a wide open competitive game.