BLAME THE MANAGER (essay)

Time for a little baseball talk. That’s code for time for me to vent and discuss a cardinal rule in baseball that only I seem to believe in. Here is the rule: If you lose by one run, it is the manager’s fault.

If you are the home team and are down by one run in the bottom of the ninth, all you need is one runner on first with nobody out. And I see this time and time again. Managers get the blessing of God, bottom of the ninth, nobody out and they get a runner on first. Now this is not rocket science.

You have to get the runner to second. Remember second base managers? AKA scoring position?

How do you get that runner to second? Well never, ever let the next batter hit away. Because he can get an out leaving the runner stranded on first. He can hit into a double play -now you have two outs, when a second ago, you had zero, zip, nada outs. Bunt. For Christ’s sake – BUNT.

Okay that gives you one out, with a runner on second. Again. Not rocket science. The next step?

Pretend to bunt. This draws the third baseman in. No one is covering third and the runner on second can steal third. Now we have a runner on third with only one out. Hello! Suicide squeeze.

The runner scores and the game is tied. And you still have one out, as the infielder threw to home, and the batter is on first. It is called creating runs.

But I repeat. If you lose a baseball game by one run, blame the manager. He was too busy playing it safe, hoping for a miracle, aka a walk-off homer, instead of managing. A good manager will always find a way to score one run. A bad manager will lose a lot of one run games.

Well, I am glad I got that off my chest. Onto my next pet peeve. What is it with all these vampire movies???