Bottom of the ninth, less than two outs, runner on third poised to score the tying or winning run on something so simple as a pop fly hit just deep enough for the runner to tag-up and race home. If you’re a fan of the team manufacturing this cheap, run-scoring play, you’re happy enough. It gets the job done, but it still feels awkward, maybe even unfair, if only just a bit. However, if you are cheering for the team which just gave up this cheap excuse for a run, you are left with that sick taste in your mouth, the kind of sick which you can only swallow back down, because really there is nothing you can do about it.
What if there was something you could do about it? Not you the fan, but you the player, the one standing there in the outfield with your hand in your glove, the glove which you use to catch the ball, but that is all you ever use it for, except for when you use it to cover your mouth so that you and your fellow defenders can conduct secret defensive conversations or shout obscenities without being caught on camera about the fact there’s nothing you can do to defend against the sacrifice fly, nothing except possess a cannon for an arm.
I love to see runners getting gunned-down at the plate, or beating a throw with a wild slide, arms outstretched to reach the plate before the catcher can tag him out. That sure makes for amazing play-by-play, possibly an amazing double-play, but what if the catch could be made and the out gotten without having to worry about throwing out the runner, because he never was able to advance? Just because a ball is hit to the warning track, doesn’t mean that it has to be caught there.
There is another use for a baseball glove which has yet to become a part of the game of baseball as it is played on the field. This is not to say that it has never been a part of the game of baseball. It has. Go on Youtube, or watch a few innings of the Ken Burn’s 9-part documentary “Baseball”, and check out the old-timers playing pepper, or juggling the ball around hacky-sack style, and using their gloves to tap, bump, and set the ball up for their teammates’ tremendous tricks to come. It’s amazing the magic they could make, and fascinating how much control they possessed over both the ball and their gloves.
Professional baseball players are around their equipment virtually every day of their lives. They know the balls and their gloves inside and out. They know how to use this equipment better than anyone else in the world. This is comparable to how well a professional basketball player can dribble when not guarded, or how well soccer players can juggle the ball they use. Now take this knowledge and sprinkle in a healthy dose of volleyball.
Here is how a normal sac-fly plays out: Crack of the bat, ball goes up, outfielder goes back and sets his feet for the catch and throw while the runner heads back to his base and sets his feet to run. Then the ball is caught, the runner takes off, the ball is thrown, and the outcome is uncertain.
Here is what I am suggesting should be the new sequence of events: Crack of the bat and the ball goes up, the outfielder runs to set his feet while other fielders come to assist him and the runner goes back to his base. The runner sets his feet to run, but the ball is not caught, nor does it hit the ground, because using his glove the outfielder bumps the ball back up into the air, volleyball-style, either back and forth between teammates, or back down to himself, over and over again, while the runner attempting to tag-up just sort of stands there with a WTF is going on look on his face. The goal is to volley the baseball back in close enough to the infield, to where it will eventually be caught, all the while keeping the confused base-runner from advancing.
Forget bat-flips, I want to see Goose Gossage grossly flip his lid when this play shows up as the number-1 web-gem at the end of his Baseball Tonight. Let’s see this scenario become the new norm going forward for almost all future potential sacrifice-flies. So what if web-gems resemble bloopers resemble web-gems, as long as they help tally outs. With outfielders working together in tandem with their gloves and each other, using both the insides and outsides of the leather, open and/or closed, whichever way they find works best, to bump, bump, bump, set, and catch potentially sacrificial fly-balls, fan’s will be given an entirely new type of play for which to cheer. Batted-balls which in times past would’ve and should’ve been caught around the warning track, going forward will now be volleyed, or peppered, either solo or among teammates, until eventually they are caught just yards from the infield dirt and render harmless the runner stranded back at his base of origin.
Sure, absolutely it’s going to look weird at first. Hell, it might not ever stop looking weird, and yes there will be hiccups, but once this play is practiced and figured out, this play is going to garner outs while preventing runs, runs which before this evolution were much more difficult, and in many cases impossible, to prevent. Now, if someone could just coin a clever term for this thing… I like the term “peppered”, as in… “When the ball was hit, it looked as if the Braves were about to score the winning run, but the Cubs’ outfielders were able to pepper the flavorless fly-ball back nearer to the infield, and the potential run bak into impotence.”