Sunday, June 22, 2014
Lines on the field
?Seeing the lines spray painted for free kicks is a genius move. It's such an obvious thing once you see it, you wonder why it wasn't invented 20 years ago. Even when players try to stand in front of the line, the referee will immediately blow the whistle, and the defender will obviously get back to the line. (I don't know what happens if the defender AGAIN tries to cheat in an obvious manner. I'd LOVE to see a yellow card there.)
Anyway, is baseball best played when strong hitters do their best to swing at balls, and not bunt to keep the defense to play them honestly? Or, are we ok that we need to let this play out organically, without legislating behaviour?
I remember when we played on our company team, one of my buddies was a HUGE pull hitter. And I did something terrible to him: I told the 3B to go play RF-rover. My buddy was VERY upset at me. And he wanted to show me up, so he did his best to hit opposite field. Which to him meant hitting the ball just to the left of the 2B bag, where me as SS was waiting right for him. We never played him like that again. We all felt it was fun/funny the first time, but it would be very unsporting if we kept doing it.
Of course, this is MLB. Is it fun or serious? Could we put a line marker halfway between 2b and 3B and ensure that at least 1 fielder plays between this line marker and the 3B foul line? (We don't have to do this at 1B, because the 1B will always be nearby.) For some reason, the OF is different. We don't seem to have a problem how they are positioned. And then it hit me: MGL noted that almost EVERYONE tries to hit it to the OF, while the IF gets the "mistakes". So,, it's almost as if we're ok in fielders doing their utmost in positioning their OF wherever they want, but for "mistake" hits, we don't want all the fielders there waiting to get the out, that even in mistakes, hitters should have a decent chance of getting on base.
So, what do you think? Is it a pain to watch the massive overshifts in the infield? Or, it's just the cost of doing business?
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