In baseball, a wild pitch (abbreviated WP) is charged to a pitcher when a pitch is too high, too short, or too wide of home plate for the catcher to field with ordinary effort, thereby allowing the batter and/or one or more baserunners to advance or to score. When (a) first base is unoccupied and/or (b) there are two outs, the catcher must catch the third strike in order to retire the batter; if a wild pitch occurs on such a third strike, the pitcher is credited with a strikeout, but the batter is not retired—he may attempt to advance to first base and must be tagged with the ball or forced at first in order to effect an out.