The Dozen Most Awesome Plays In Baseball: A Semi-Unscientific Look (Part 2)

It is said, or has been, that a baseball game between fifth-place teams is a restless siesta occasionally interrupted, if there should be such luck, by plays so impressive and relatively rare that we, as fans, ought to regard them only as “awesome.” So awesome are some, in fact, that we might—might, mind you—briefly remove our logos in order to tip our collective cap. Here, we tip that cap a final time before restoring the logos of choice.

Let the logos not blind us to the awesomeness of a game and its artistry.

The Shortstop Play In The 5.5 Hole

In the mind’s eye we see Derek Jeter, because Jeter played in New York and New York is where perception originates, apparently, but in truth, the play we now consider has been the work of any number of shortstops, each delivering a signature flair to a conventional style: the leap and throw, the plant and fire, the running toss across the body. What the styles have in common, of course, is that you are wholly incapable of each. You are not equipped, in the legs or torso or left hand or right arm, to make it happen.

Whichever form it takes, and whichever shortstop executes it, it is a “big league play.”

Most of us played youth ball; many played in high school. We know what a routine play looks like and how easy it should be. One of the frustrations of watching big league baseball is also one of its secret, life-affirming joys: Come on, ya bum, I made that play in high school!

And you did.

You fielded cleanly the sort of easy three-hopper that the shortstop somehow just booted. You made the simple toss he inexplicably launched into the first row, and then you waved at your girlfriend in the stands. She wore your letter jacket. Second-Team All-District! Cool.

What you didn’t do is race 30 feet to your right, pluck a grounder from the grass and, in one fashion or another, fire that thing about 180 feet to first base in time to nail a runner.

If you did, congratulations: You are Andrelton Simmons.

What makes the play so beautiful—and it is always so, never plain—is its precision and capriciousness on each end. Start with the first baseman’s catch. Barring the runner’s stumble at the plate, the play is always a close one and almost invariably relies on the first baseman’s ability to impersonate a gifted Olympic gymnast by going into what most folks call “the splits.” That such a spectacular effort at shortstop is often nullified by a first baseman’s refusal to practice Pilates is one of the great tragedies of baseball. Face it: No matter how gymnastic the play, it goes in the trash if the runner is called safe.

Now move to the throw. Does the average fan realize—really realize—how far that is? It’s the distance of an NFL punt whose punter out-kicked his coverage. Were the shortstop so inclined, he could return the grounder 20 yards before tearing his ACL. Even if the average high-school shortstop were able to corral the grounder, he’d claim Dave Concepcion as his muse by bouncing the throw to first. To make that throw while leaping, twirling, and/or running is to punt a football while knitting an infinity scarf on a rectangular loom.

Okay, even if the analogy is a poor one, you get the idea. Go place a mini-trampoline in short left field, leap backward and throw a regulation baseball to the first baseman.

More proof? Move to the glove. He picks the grounder like he’s plucking a nesting bird, with plans to bottle-feed it. Taken for granted, you could say, is the softness of his hand, especially in relation to the violence of his arm. The limbs work in concert. Clapton plays guitar with both hands, not just one. Even as the shortstop plucks the grounder, his left leg must be the forward leg. Potential energy is what’s inside it, spring-loaded, and at the instant he plucks the ball he plants that foot and launches into a position where no position should be claimed, not by mortals, a twisting half-turn that would otherwise seem incompatible with the act of throwing a ball a great distance and with startling precision. He is at once a gymnast, a high jumper and a javelin thrower, all while wearing golf spikes.

Let us remember that it doesn’t begin here. After all, he didn’t position himself in short left field. What do you think he is, a rover for the First Methodist softball team? It begins with what infielders call “first step,” summoned from fast-twitch fiber and a preternatural ability to anticipate the play. He is moving toward the ball at the instant, if not sooner, that it is put into motion, and he does so with a geometer’s ability to pick a line and a sprinter’s ability to cover it swiftly. All that’s left now is the pluck, the leap, the turn and the throw.

Yeah, even if the runner is safe and the play doesn’t count, you still couldn’t do it.

The Steal Of Second Base When “Everyone Knows He’s Going”

Perhaps the best way to appreciate the speed of this base stealer—to reallllllllllllllllly get a sense of his velocity as he slams into the bag—is to make … it … look … less … fast.

Technology, bless it, has bestowed upon us the marvel of “super-slow motion,” and with it we can see not only a bat shatter into shrapnel but also a base stealer slide into second with such force that we are compelled to conjecture as to his post-baseball career: crash-test dummy. Why not? He’s already doing it without airbags. By slowing the thief to a fraction of his real-time speed, it allows us a closer look at the power—the violence—that caps the theft we all saw coming, the one whose concluding oomph is inherent in its start.

That start: From the safety of first base the runner takes his lead, one step, two steps, three steps, four, each new inch a provisional test of a boundary the opponents negotiate. In his future is 90 feet—no, 85 feet, 84, 83—of coveted space, a line that his legs will attempt to cover in roughly 3.25 seconds or faster, or, less time than it takes for a pair of throws.

This most basic of equations is central to the play before us, its math computed in dirt and thin air, and now it awaits its rightful solution in the inevitable collision of limbs.

What has caused this inevitability—this shared certitude that the guy is gonna go—is a felicitous combination of factors. First, the situation calls for it, even dictates it: late innings, team down by one. Second, the guy is super fast, as fast as super-slow motion is slow. Look at his legs. He’s a stallion. Look at his stats. He’s a thief. Were he the plodding slab of flesh known as the designated hitter, the crowd would be without its buzz and the air its tension, but this guy’s history has animated the moments to come.

The shortstop and second baseman have decided who’s covering.

The batter just might take this pitch.

The managers, the announcers, the fans—they wonder about a pitch-out.

The runner extends his lead.

The pitcher, checking the runner, now tries to delay the inevitable—maybe even prevent it!—by throwing back to the bag, an effort as predictable as it is important. Maybe the runner gets “caught napping.” Maybe he gets tuckered out, frustrated, mad. Maybe, and more plausibly, the pitcher manages to delay the runner’s departure juuuuuuuuust enough—say, by .05 second—that the throw from catcher will beat the guy by a step. Success and failure, no matter which direction they go, are separated by a hesitation, a breath.

The negotiation is tense but also tedious. The crowd, as they say, is restless.

With repetition the prelude to a one-and-done, the pitcher throws again to the bag. The crowd, depending on its colors, either boos or sits hushed, waiting, in one way or another, for the steal to have its start. Accumulating in stages, the dirt on the runner’s jersey is an emblem of his threat. It gathers in layers, each a mark of the pitcher’s fear and a hedge against what’s coming. Ahead lie three and half seconds of baseline and a base to end the instant. The air there waits for its dust, a cloud above the violence beneath it. It will fade.

Again the runner is crouching, priming fibers, gathering his attention and centering it on a point. A foot will invite his ignition, the ferocity of his launch. He waits as we wait, on edge, ready for the signal that starts the race. It is waged against a throwing motion (.8 second); a fastball (.45 second); a transfer (.9 second); a 128-foot throw (1.1 second); and, at last, a tag that draws its duration from the accuracy of the throw. Once again, speed and dimension will deliver a bang-bang coming together, a meeting crafted from ideal ground.

Quickly but at last, the foot is lifted and the move to home is made. History has taken the long delay and moved it to what doesn’t matter, anticipation having yielded to its source. Assembling his energy and directing it in a line, the runner thrusts himself toward an engagement modeled from these conditions. It is coming. The time is on fast approach.

Moments hence we watch again as the earth is slowly parted, oh-so-slowly parted, its grains tumbling from the hand while a grimace follows it in.

The Strike ’im Out/Throw ’im Out Double Play On A Full Count

We begin this tale in what literary eggheads call en media res, or, what the rest of us call “the middle of things.” Crouching, a catcher with many things on his mind and many things on his body—chest protector, check; catcher’s mask, check; athletic cup, cup check—does what he is expected to do by catching a big league pitch and then delivering a strike to second base, all in less time than it takes an NBA player to earn a three-second violation.

“Pop time” is the phrase that comes to mind here, because wow, let’s be honest, a human being who is not only expected to perform this trick but then fulfills the expectation really does deserve a moment for a nice refreshing Pepsi. Make it a large, kid. You’ve earned it.

In truth, “pop time” is, as you know, the brief but ridiculously crowded juncture whose boundaries are two audible pops of leather—that of the catcher, first, and the infielder at second—and whose outcome can determine the difference between a runner on second with two outs, let’s say, and a fist-pumping return to the defensive team’s dugout. If you blink you won’t miss it, but a not-negligible segment will have definitely passed you by.

Worth noting, too, is that the duration of a blink, concealed in a swipe tag or a headfirst slide, is often what makes the pop time juuuuuust fast enough or way, way, way too slow.

It’s a tough business. Time is unforgiving if it isn’t used well.

What makes this play dramatic, though, is the set of circumstances that comes with the crouch: a full count on the batter; an empty bag just begging for the runner at first. Maybe not everybody knows the runner is going, but most folks have a pretty good idea.

From an offensive standpoint, the strategy is this: If the runner takes off and the batter swings, we have a statistically decent chance of putting guys on first and third with one out, or, failing that, a statistically better chance of putting a guy on second with two outs. Hey, scoring position is scoring position, regardless of how we get there. And if the pitch is a ball, well, we’ll have runners at first and second, with plans to plate them soon.

From a defensive standpoint, the strategy is this: Let’s prevent the aforementioned possibilities—aforementioned, because we talked about ’em on the mound—by whiffing the guy at the plate and then, should circumstances call for it, gunning the dude at second.

Simple, sure … but not so fast.

The conundrum is basic: To notch a strikeout and not a walk, the pitcher needs to throw a “good strike” – not too far off the edge but not too far in. If it’s in, the batter might end the conundrum by slapping the ball to the bleachers. If it’s off, he might just stroll to first. If he does strike out on a pitch off the plate, the catcher might have a harder time executing the transfer and completing the strike ’im out/throw ’im out. Pop time waits for no man.

Mucking up matters all the more is that pitchers, with quite some statistical frequency, rely on breaking balls as their whiff pitches, while catchers are best at throwing out would-be thieves after receiving letter-high fastballs.

What to do? What we have here is an irreconcilable difference.

At stake are a variety of win expectancies, each just waiting for its window.

We begin this paragraph en media res. The catcher is crouching, as is the runner at first. The pitcher is set, as is the batter. What the catcher has in mind is the immediate future and the many possibilities it holds. Most of all he is prepared for one—this one—and in an instant the ball is in his mitt, the bat having missed and the runner having run. The pop of leather gives rise to a grunt. The mask flies sideways and the ball is on a path—product of a ricochet, it appears: so sudden, straight, fast. Motion is toward a meeting with motion.

And now, post facto, the catcher is jogging to the dugout, mask off, pumping a fist.

The Suicide Squeeze

In the moments just prior to departure, the runner understands that his survival is key to the mission. He is hardly the “redshirt” of TV lore. Indeed, though the scene is televised, he is not the familiar stock character, a la Ensign Ricky of Star Trek renown, whose existence is predicated on its predictable end. Talk about planned obsolescence! That old trope – the demise that promptly follows a portentous introduction—is his to defy.

It is also his to fear. If we allow that “demise” in this context suggests a rally-killing out and not a life-ending event, and that “introduction” points to the runner’s arrival at third base, the potential for a ghastly demise is as real as it is immediate. The baseline waits with pending echoes of “dead man walking! Or, rather, running! Or, come to think of it, scrambling back and forth in a wretched and unwinnable rundown whose slow-motion replays will vividly reveal his terror!” It is the place where forlorn hope is set to inhabit one doomed man, to turn him, inside the space of 90 feet, into the ghost of Ensign Ricky.

The play begins even before it takes shape. A sign from the dugout is relayed to the intended recipients, and in silence the future is fuzzily cast. Now, upon decoding the secret semaphore and acknowledging that the squeeze play is on, the runner has entered a tacit and irrevocable pact to relinquish at least partial control of his well being to a guy who might not have decoded the same message. Survival relies, at least in part, on a shared understanding that the mission is on. If the understanding is merely one-sided—if the runner alone will endeavor to sustain his life—an almost certain demise awaits him.

This he knows. This he feels, surely. Still, he must hide his anxiety, however acute, in a business-as-usual bearing. Ready, he takes his lead. It is no ordinary lead, even if it resembles each of the others. In it is the unusual readiness to submit to an outcome before its development is assured. He is, or is about to be, the trapeze artist who consents to a launch toward a partner’s arms without knowing that his partner is there to catch him.

The pitcher comes set. Possibly aware that the squeeze play is possible but probably aware it isn’t probable, he gives a cursory glance at the runner and then lifts his lead foot in advance of the pitch. On his mind, for the most part, is preventing solid contact and keeping the runner marooned at third, unable, in the end, to convince anyone to heed his H-E-L-P sign. Surprise! It is at this instant—or perhaps just a half beat behind it, so that the pitcher won’t have time to alter his pitch—that the runner upends expectation by turning his hips and accelerating toward the plate. In a liminal phase between assurances, he must accept his uncertainty while seeking the quickest path on which to end it. The shortest distance between two points is a straight line covered by foot speed and fear.

In the meantime, if there is time, he glances at a ball that will beat him and then at a batter who, he sincerely hopes, is squaring to bunt. If the batter is instead taking the pitch, the runner will likely meet his immediate and ignoble end at the business end of a catcher’s mitt just as the batter begins making plans for the minor leagues. And if instead the batter is swinging, well … the runner might soon and truly be dead, or something very like it, along the base path. Those chalk outlines are funny only when they are jokes.

A swell of sound now accompanies the scene; a roar has risen from the seats. Inside it, shouts of either “go!” or “he’s going!” have rendered the message indistinguishable from its opposite. Somebody will win this battle and somebody will lose, and no matter which way it goes, some folks will feel outrage and others euphoria, and vocally so. Now with each new step the sound is growing louder, as if the runner is toting the remote control.

And when in an instant the batter squares to bunt, a sense of shared recognition sweeps across the stadium, a sudden understanding, among fans and players alike, that this is a squeeeeeeeeeeeeeze! In the balance now are public condemnations and talk-show praise, each conditional on a Louisville Slugger and the subsequent placement, should it come to pass, of a once-speeding but suddenly decelerating baseball—the bunt. It is a sacrifice.

The Bang-Bang 5-4-3 Double Play

The beauty of the double play is twofold, fittingly. First, circumstances are such—say, a runner at first and one out—that you self-identify as a modern Nostradamus and see it before it happens, coaxing from your mind’s eye the singular imagery of a twin killing even as the fielders assume their positions. Second, as the play unfolds, you watch as if it’s fated to happen, eager for the fielders to produce an outcome that has always seemed secured but forgetting that the “guarantee” is predicated on the excellence you take for granted. Only when the play is history might you glance back from echoes of “automatic” and “tailor-made” to appreciate the performances that yielded those predictable claims.

Among all the conventional double plays—4-6-3, 6-4-3, 3-6-3—perhaps the most beautiful is the 5-4-3, or, put differently, third to second to first. Granted, the more surprising variety—say, the diving snag of a line drive and the doubling-up of the runner—is more theatrical and thrilling, a spectacle of spontaneous artistry that falls outside the template. But most players will tell you that such spontaneity is pretty easy. It all but removes the bugaboo of athletic performance—namely, thinking—and often generates a more laudatory response, because no one anticipated the play in the first place. It’s a bonus.

By contrast, the 5-4-3 is beautiful because it seems—and in a sense is—so routine. But if it’s the equivalent of a paint-by-numbers portrait, we should endeavor a more exacting critique of its brushstrokes. First we have a third baseman fielding a routine grounder cleanly. Simple enough, right? True, we’d have given extra credit if instead he backhanded a hot one-hopper, but the fact remains that a man with a .990 fielding percentage is expected to snag the routine grounder precisely because similar grounders have formed the bulk of that percentage. His .990 is not just a product of routine grounders; it is also a product of his ability to make them routine. He is really good at this. Even if he has satisfied our expectations, those same expectations should not rob him of praise by devaluing the skill and hard work that have made them seem automatic.

Next is the throw. Many of us can go to the county fair and, in efforts to win a stuffed bear, deliver an overhand strike to the old-timey milk bottles. Fewer do it by snagging a bouncer and winging it across the body, sidearm and quick, while making directional adjustments based on the carny’s position and momentum relative to the milk bottles. Even fewer of us do it with the terrifying foreknowledge that if the ball gets past the bottles, it can roll all the way down the midway and allow a guy to score a free ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl.

If a double play is split into halves, the first half is now complete. The third baseman, in less time than it takes to write this clause, has risked a horrifying error—not to mention the public censure that would have attended it—by flinging a screamer to the second baseman. If the runner is far from the bag, he has thrown the ball straight across it. If, by contrast, the runner is making like the unholy spawn of Dick Butkus and the warrior goddess Bellona, he has led the second baseman to the outfield side of the bag, letting that little white square operate as a defense against a broken tibia.

Now it is the second baseman’s turn to make a masquerade of “routine.” First he must execute his dance steps—across the bag, behind it or in front—while transferring a formerly sizzling ball from glove to hand and preparing to hurdle a runner who is poised to say, “Uh, sorry, man, I didn’t mean to break you in half, but it was a clean slide, for sure.”

Ah, but let’s back up. That runner isn’t his only source of potential pain. Have you ever turned two? To make a quick transfer, you need to position the fingers of the throwing hand inside the palm of the glove as the ball comes spinning in. This isn’t hand-eye coordination; this is fingernail-eye coordination. A miscalculation of a single millimeter can leave you with the definition of agony at your fingertips. How do you avoid such suffering? You avoid it by possessing talent enough to be a big league second baseman, sure, but also by practicing. You make that catch and transfer a million times. And what is the product of that practice? Well, it’s a faster pivot, yes, but also a bone bruise like nobody’s business.

Ignoring the pain in his palm, he steps across or behind the bag and launches a low-angle throw to first base, with plans to scalp the runner before hurdling his skull. This is the moment. Take a picture. The second baseman, having avoiding public rebuke by neither dropping the ball nor missing the bag, is in mid-air, legs splayed, his crotch directly above a weaponized helmet as the ball spins away from his fingerprints.

Piece of cake, man. Piece of cake.

The Two-Out, Two-Strike Home Run (After Several Fouled-Off Pitches)

All home runs are surprises. They all jump out of a cake. Big league baseball isn’t backyard Wiffle ball, where, depending on the height of the chain-link fence and its position relative to the kitchen window, dingers fly into Mrs. Milligan’s yard at a rate of 3.2 per every five plate appearances in the coveted “just before supper” time slot.

Here in the Post-Big Head Barry And The Anabolic Monsters Era, even the mightiest of mighty sluggers will slug one homer per every dozen or so at-bats. Granted, your chances of seeing a Bryce Harper homer are better than those of fans who, in 1871, hoped to see Lip Pike hit one out. (Mr. Pike led the National Association with one dinger per 71.2 at-bats that year, which compels one to wonder how often he squared around to bunt.) But generally speaking, your chances of seeing a home run in any big league at-bat are about the same as those of contacting an actual representative in any Time Warner customer-service call.

Now consider a rarity yet greater, and a difficulty much deeper, than hitting a big league pitch into Mrs. Milligan’s yard after the old biddy has moved to a house some 350 feet distant and behind a fence about, oh, yay high. Certainly you may turn, as part of your consideration, to sources more sabermetrically enlightening, but suffice it to say that homering off a Zack Greinke slider on a two-strike count is akin to convincing the Time Warner rep to refrain from offering a service protection plan.

Regardless of the pitcher’s identity, the two-strike homer is always a surprise—terrible for fans of the pitcher, pleasant for fans of the batter, interesting for fans of the game. How does it even happen? Reduced to a role in security, the batter is no longer in bloody attack mode but is merely “protecting the plate,” hoping less to create than to prevent. Hunkered down but defensive, he isn’t “looking for his pitch”—by which to suggest his pitch, the one he can drive through Mrs. Milligan’s window—but for any pitch that will delay or forestall a sad walk to the dugout. The pitcher, meanwhile, is in a position of strength, peering down from his dominant mound and coaxing the batter into “plate approach and discipline,” code words for choking up on the bat and slapping at a pitch as if he is the spawn of Bud Harrelson and Mrs. Milligan, who once slapped a clerk for “being cheeky.”

Now we consider, because the title compels us to do so, a dinger delivered on the occasion of not only two strikes but also two outs. All that separates the pitcher from a Powerade is the cocky walk that follows an out. Meanwhile, what separates the batter from a return to his defensive position—you’ve seen it; he sets down his helmet just as the TV shifts to the Chevy Silverado commercial—is any number of delay tactics. He might show a “good eye” by taking a pitch in the dirt. He might show a better eye by taking a pitch just off the edge. Or he might embody the “pesky hitter” by fouling off pitch after pitch, as if his sole purpose is to drive up the pitcher’s pitch count while driving the guy nuts.

And so it goes. What began as just another at-bat has become the battle royal of mismatched proportions, a war of calculated aggression versus deliberate protection. Pitting his collection of pitches against the memorized image of a heat map, the pitcher exploits his advantage by throwing the pitch—attempting to throw it—precisely where weak contact and no contact have occupied an area of high probability.

“No need to pipe it,” he’s thinking. “I’ve got him right where I want him.”

And yet pitch after pitch, the batter is skimming the margins between probabilities, turning a few degrees of a swing path into the tiny yet magnificent difference between strike three and just another strike two. Pitch after pitch, he is turning a few microns of treated lumber into the magnificent yet tiny difference between strike two and a ground-out, a pop-up, a broken-bat comebacker to a pitcher who monopolized every advantage by producing a two-strike count.

But here we are—eight, nine, 12 pitches into the at-bat—and the batter is still evoking images of a middle-aged guy at the batting cage, swinging late and lunging early as he endeavors without success to recreate a long-ago dinger into Mrs. Milligan’s yard. Partly mesmerized and partly narcotized by the relentless repetition, we keep watching, alert and lulled to sleep at once, until finally, until suddenly … wow!

Piece of cake, man. Piece of surprising, icing-covered cake.