The present tense reflects the author's present or the speaker's present, and it is critically important to understand that. The speaker or the writer creates the grammatical units (sentences), and it is from the perspective of the speaker or writer that grammatical features are generally determined.

All actions happen, of course, in the subject's present.

• "The batter was hit by the ball."
• "The batter is hit by the ball."
• "The batter will be hit by the ball."

All describe the one event, which for the batter was in his present — of course! The distinctions made by the verbs is the time of occurrence of that event in relation to the time the author writes that statement or the speaker makes that statement. The present tense is used for actions or states which, from the perspective of the writer or speaker, occurs at the time he or she is writing or speaking about it.