Kubek remembers the first time he played behind Whitey Ford against the Tigers in Yankee Stadium. “Whitey would turn around and with his eyes would move me toward the center of the diamond when Kaline came up.” Ford was going to throw the right-handed Kaline fastballs away and was confident Kaline could not pull those pitches. And Kubek could be sure that the pitch would be put where Ford intended. When Connie Mack had Athletics pitching staffs adorned with the likes of Rube Waddell, Chief Bender, Herb Pennock and Eddie Plank—four Hall of Famers—he became famous for positioning his fielders by waving his scorecard. He knew that his pitchers knew where the ball should be pitched, and that they had the skill to execute their intentions. But there were many seasons when Mack did not bother. Why bother when the pitchers can not execute?
On an evening in May, 1989, the Indians were at Baltimore and had base runners on second and third when there occurred one of those meetings at the mound where cogent thoughts are exchanged and momentous decisions are made. In attendance were pitcher Mark Williamson, manager Frank Robinson, catcher Mickey Tettleton and Ripken. He joined the meeting to learn what was being decided about pitching to the Indians’ Pete O’Brien. “I wanted to know if we were going to pitch to him with first base open or try to walk him unintentionally-intentionally. If we were going to throw the ball outside, outside, outside, that would indicate where I would want to play. They said they were going to pitch to him so I asked, ‘Going to try to get him out?’ [Ripken meant, and was perfectly understood on the mound: Are you going to pitch O’Brien outside but close enough to the outside corner to tempt him to put the ball in play?] That’s all I wanted to know.” Ripken, remembering his laconic question, laughs. What a difference a year makes. In May, 1988, there was no laughter in the Orioles’ clubhouse. And although in 1988 Ripken wanted to know what the Orioles’ pitchers were planning, there was such a gap between their intentions and their execution that the information was useless. It was useful in 1989 because the Orioles’ pitchers were better. But, again, they were better in part because they had confidence in their defense.
During a game in Baltimore when Oakland had a runner in scoring position, a batter hit a grounder toward Ripken at short. Someone on the Athletics’ bench muttered, “Kick it, kick it.” Dave Duncan, standing in the dugout, said quietly, “Think what you’re saying.” It was a nice tribute from a pitching coach to a shortstop who plays in tandem with pitchers.
Of course a problem inseparable from intelligent baseball is this: If intelligent behavior on the field is understood by the other team, that behavior becomes valuable information for them. The trick is to behave intelligently but not obviously, or too soon. Roland Hemond became the Orioles’ general manager just as I was deciding to write about Ripken. This worried Hemond, for reasons that confirmed the wisdom of the decision. “Cal,” Hemond said, “plays the infield like a manager.” By that he meant that Ripken is a cerebral player, constantly moving in response to the changing situation, from pitch to pitch, in anticipation of what his pitcher will do, which depends on what the pitcher expects the batter to expect (which depends on what the batter thinks the pitcher expects him to expect). Hemond’s worry was that by revealing Ripken’s thought processes I would enable opponents to decode Ripken’s behavior and make useful inferences about what Orioles pitchers are doing. Before long the book-reading ball clubs (and it is not clear how large that class is) would, in effect, be stealing signals not from the catcher but from the behavior of the large man on the left side of the infield.
Thinking infielders who want to cheat must do so at the last minute, lest they telegraph to the hitter the kind of pitch that is coming. Kubek recalls that Rick Burleson of the Red Sox lacked quickness, so he moved two steps to his right on off-speed pitches to right-handed hitters, and two steps to his left on fastballs—and he moved too soon. He moved as soon as the catcher gave the sign to the pitcher, before the pitcher started his motion. Kubek says that Mickey Mantle feasted on Red Sox pitching during the seasons when Jimmy Piersall was the Red Sox center fielder. Piersall was a fine outfielder but he, too, moved too soon. The Red Sox shortstop would signal with his glove behind his back indicating a fastball (no glove meant a breaking ball). Piersall would move and Mantle would sit on whatever pitch was coming.
Of course an intelligent outfielder can use disinformation against an observant batter. When Tony Gwynn briefly became a center fielder after five seasons (and two Gold Gloves) in right field, he discovered a way to mislead hitters. From center field he could see the catcher’s signs, so he would shift “wrong” before the pitcher started his motion, then he would quickly move back to where he really wanted to be. His hope was that the batter would make a mistaken inference from his first move.
Hershiser believes that each player, when his team is at bat, should watch the opponent playing his position—the second baseman watch the second baseman, and so on. “You’re the second baseman and you may see that the other second baseman is giving away pitches—maybe he’s moving a step on a curveball. Then you let everyone else know. Then the coaching staff doesn’t have to do it. Alfredo [Griffin, the Dodgers’ shortstop] does this. All of a sudden you’ll hear him murmur, ‘curveball.’ Next pitch, ‘slider.’ All of a sudden he’s got it all right.” Gene (“Baseball and malaria keep coming back”) Mauch managed the Expos in Montreal’s tiny Jarry Park. Mauch stole information by watching the vein in a particular shortstop’s neck. Mauch knew that the man used a common, simple signal: Using his glove to shield his mouth so that only his partner playing second could see it, he would either keep his mouth closed, meaning that he would cover second on an attempted steal, or he would open his mouth wide, meaning that the other fellow would cover. If the man’s vein stood out, it meant his mouth was open. Tim McCarver played for Mauch there one season and got half a dozen hits by stroking the ball toward the spot that Mauch indicated—always correctly—would be vacated.
The 1920 World Series between Brooklyn and Cleveland is remembered only for the fact that Cleveland’s second baseman, Bill Wambsganss, pulled off an unassisted triple play. But something else notable happened involving the other second baseman. Brooklyn’s Pete Kilduff scooped up a few too many handfuls of infield dirt. When Burleigh Grimes, the future Hall of Famer, was pitching and the Dodgers’ catcher called for Grimes’s famous spitball, Kilduff scooped up some dirt to absorb the moisture on the ball that might be hit to him. Eventually the Indians deciphered Kilduff’s quirk. Grimes lost games five and seven as the Indians took the Series, 5–2.
The infielders least likely to move in ways that give away valuable information to batters are infielders quick enough to move late. “Quick feet and soft hands.” That is Ryne Sandberg’s terse summation of the prerequisites for a good infielder. He should know. Sandberg’s seventy-second game in 1989 was his one-thousandth game at second base and qualified him to be recorded as the all-time leader in fielding percentage at that position, .989. Through 1989 he had made just 64 errors in 5,889 chances. Between June 10, 1987, and April 29, 1989, he did not make a throwing error, a span of 248 games. He ended the 1989 season on a 90-game errorless streak, having hit 20 home runs since his last error.
Dressing at Wrigley Field prior to playing the Pirates in 1989, while teammates were being put through stretching exercises on the carpeted floor of the clubhouse, Sandberg said something that indicated why he is the standard by which contemporary second basemen are judged. He said he anticipates, but does not begin cheating or even leaning in a particular direction as the pitcher begins his delivery. “I take two steps forward and get into a bent-knees position, balanced on the balls of my feet, ready to go, on every pitch. I believe it’s important to anticipate that the ball is going to be hit my way on every pitch.” But he leans or moves only after the pitch is on the way to the plate. This is because he has the quickness to wait and watch the flight of the ball to see if it is going where it has been called for. “If I see a fastball and watch the flight of the ball and
see that it is high and away to a left-hander, I know he’s probably not going to pull the ball.” Sandberg often warns the Cubs’ first baseman when an off-speed pitch is coming to a lefthander who might pull it. “With Mark Grace playing first, for example, I’ll try not to be too obvious, but I’ll say, ‘Come on, Gracie,’ something like that. He will know either a change-up is coming or a slow breaking ball.”
Ripken lacks Sandberg’s range and has more territory to cover than a second baseman, so he has to be especially careful lest his anticipations become visible, and decipherable. “It’s good to get to know a catcher so you can anticipate your movements. If your movements are too extreme, you tell the batter what pitch is coming. Say a pull hitter is up and we’re trying to get him out on slow breaking balls, and all of a sudden with two strikes the catcher calls for a fastball away. Suppose there are two strikes on the hitter and we’ve been giving him a steady diet of off-speed pitches. You know that he’s got to wait longer on those pitches, and he’s going to look for another off-speed pitch. You know that even a good pull hitter is not going to pull this fastball into the hole [between short and third]. So you want to cheat to your left as far as you can. Now, if you get a good feel for the catcher and you know there’s a possibility that he might try to sneak the fastball by on the outside corner, you’re not going to be playing as though the hitter is going to pull. But if you’ve been playing all the way over toward the hole, anticipating the hitter pulling the off-speed pitch, and suddenly you see the catcher call for a fastball on the outside corner, you have to cheat an enormous amount—you have to dead sprint up the middle, and a lot of times you will give away the pitch to the hitter. The farther you have to go, the earlier you have to cheat. If your cheating is not so dramatic, you can go late enough that the hitters can’t tell anything from your movement in time to help themselves. A lot of hitters try to look at you but their concentration has to be on the pitcher releasing the ball.”
The pace and texture of a baseball game rarely require, and usually will not permit, intense concentration that ties players into knots for two and a half hours. An Orioles coach once said, “In this game it’s never going to be third-down-and-one. You don’t hit off tackle in baseball and you can’t play the game with your teeth gritted. Muscles are fine, but this is a game of relaxation, conditioned reflex and mental alertness.” The trick is to be alert while relaxed, or while feigning relaxation, as Ripken does when fraternizing with the enemy.
Ripken is a chatty shortstop, stirring up conversations with runners who arrive in his precinct at second base. But often he is working while chatting. “When they get on base I try to find out what kind of stuff they think our pitcher has. Does it seem to be a hard fork ball, a slow fork ball? Sometimes our pitcher has such a good disguising motion on it, it’s difficult for me to tell.” Ripken may want to know what the pitches of a particular new Orioles pitcher look like to hitters. “He hasn’t pitched enough for me to know whether, with two strikes, batters pull his fork ball or hit it the other way. Right when you start feeling comfortable with a young pitcher he may throw three fork balls to a right-handed hitter and the guy will be out in front of all of them. The hitter misses the first two and fouls off the third and suddenly the catcher calls for a fastball away. You know that this hitter is thinking, ‘I’ve got to wait longer on this fork ball.’ So when the catcher calls fastball away, and I know the hitter, I think, ‘Okay, I can cheat up the middle.’ I know that if he throws a fastball on the outside half of the plate there’s no way in the world the batter can pull it. I know he’s not going to hit to my right, so I’m going to move to my left.” But such anticipation by Ripken is worse than useless, it is injurious if the pitcher can not deliver the particular pitch to the particular spot. “Right when I start thinking this way, and I have confidence that he’s going to throw it on the outside half, he’ll throw the fastball on the inside part of the plate and the batter will jam it to my right and foil all the plans. Then the next time you just can’t cheat.”
When base runners arrive at second base Ripken may want to know something other than what the runner thinks about the Orioles’ pitcher. “You try to get information, as much as you can. Just to see what they’re thinking. If a right-hander hits a ball between first and second, and normally he’s a pull hitter, you ask him, ‘Did you try to do that?’ It gives you an edge if you know he’s trying to use the whole field instead of just going up there and seeing the ball and hitting it. If you know he tried to do that, then the next time the situation arises, you remember. Of course you have to decide if you can believe him. A lot of times people won’t tell you the truth.”
He illustrates this sad commentary on human nature with a story involving White Sox shortstop Ozzie Guillen and Carlton Fisk, the Sox catcher. “Mike Boddicker was pitching and Guillen always pulls Boddicker. Boddicker was trying to slop him, throwing a lot of off-speed pitches because Ozzie has a lot of movement in his swing. He’s a fidgety hitter and sometimes he has a lot of trouble waiting for the ball to get to the plate. He wants to charge out and get it. Now the slower you throw it, the farther he has to go out to get it. So Boddicker has the luxury of throwing his real slow, big breaking ball. When Guillen, a left-hander, gets out so far, the only thing he can do with it is pull it to the first-base side. So I see the breaking ball called and I’m playing him straight up [not to pull] because he hits a lot of balls to left field. I started slowly trying to cheat and right when Boddicker gets into his windup I start running [to my left] up the middle because I’m 100 percent certain that he’s going to pull the ball. So what he does is wait and slaps a little weak ground ball to my right and it lazily rolls into left field. You don’t feel too good when you get burned. It didn’t look good. It made me wonder: Did he try to do that?”
There are ways of finding out. “Players have a way of seeing things and speaking in the dugout. If you can’t believe the guy who hit it, you ask someone you can believe. So when Carlton Fisk was at second base I went up and casually said, ‘Ozzie really messed me up on that last hook [curve].’ Carlton was laughing and chirping. He said Guillen tried to do that, he was watching me all the way and saw me break toward second and he tried to hit it to the left side. It worked and he was so happy he was screaming and singing in the dugout. So the next time Guillen was up I purposely started to cheat toward second early. I ran a couple of steps, then stopped, and he hit the same weak ground ball right to me. If I hadn’t talked to Carlton I wouldn’t have known that Ozzie was trying to hit behind me, to the side I was cheating away from. I would have been running back up the middle a second time and he would have had two hits.”
Why, you may well wonder, would a wise veteran like Fisk give away useful information? “When you play every day,” Ripken explains, “and you go through so many at bats and so many situations, it doesn’t seem too harmful to tell certain things. I know I tell things to a catcher, for example, and sometimes I think, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.’ Suppose they’re pitching me inside real hard. I just say something like, ‘Aren’t you tired of pitching me inside?’ Then I’ll walk away and think that I shouldn’t have let them know I was so aware that they are pitching me a particular way.”
Besides, Ripken says, “Baseball is not an ‘enemy’ sport. You do have certain rivals and certain people you do not like. But for the most part it’s not a contact sport, it’s a pitcher-hitter confrontation more than anything else. The people who come into second base, you have so many things in common with them. It’s a friendly sport, I guess.” But Ripken rarely stops working. Not long after the incident just described, Guillen arrived at second base in a game against the Orioles. Ripken asked, “Do you know where I’m playing you?” Guillen said no, so Ripken said, “I’m playing you to pull.” But the next time Guillen came up Ripken did not play him to pull. As Casey Stengel would have put it, a lot of times people don’t always tell the truth.
What is baseball truth? Red Smith knew, and revealed it in a col
umn celebrating the genius of The Genius, Alexander Cartwright, who revealed the truth, or had it revealed to him, in that wonderful epiphany of June 19, 1846, when he, then 25, joined some friends in a meadow beside a Manhattan pond. He had a chart in hand. The dimensions of the baseball field Cartwright laid out that day may have been determined by the size of the meadow, or perhaps Cartwright just stepped off 30 paces and said, “This seems about right.” In any case, Red Smith wrote, “Ninety feet between bases represents man’s closest approach to absolute truth. The world’s fastest man can not run to first base ahead of a sharply hit ball that is cleanly handled by an infielder; he will get there only half a step too late. Let the fielder juggle the ball for one moment or delay his throw an instant and the runner will be safe. Ninety feet demands perfection. It accurately measures the cunning, speed and finesse of the base stealer against the velocity of a thrown ball. It dictates the placement of infielders. That single dimension makes baseball a fine art—and nobody knows for sure how it came to be.”
There it is, the basis of the 90-foot-at-a-time game. The aim of the team at bat, as set forth with the admirable simplicity of the rule book, is “to have its batters become runners, and its runners advance.” The aim of defense is to prevent that. Bad defensive habits are good news for opponents’ base runners.
Men at Work Page 36
