K

The scoring symbol K has been a source of confusion for baseball fans for more than a century.

When Henry Chadwick was creating the symbols for scoring a game in the middle 19th century, it is believed that the letter K was used to designate a strikeout because it is the last letter in the word struck. The letter S had already been used to designate a sacrifice necessitating another code for a strikeout.

A backwards K (ꓘ) is used when a batter strikes out looking.