THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

I was never big on the whole sportsmanship thing myself.  I’d apply the tag.  In my opinion, you play competitive baseball to win the game, not to be a good guy.  If you want to be a sportsman, play rec league.

Another way of saying that; as a member of a team, your first responsibility is to that team.  You are serving your team by applying the tag. Once you get the out and play is dead, then you can worry about being a good guy.

Absolutely I apply the tag.  Then do anything I can to help the guy, though realistically Sean the ballplayer isn’t in any better position to help than Sean the internet poster.  It really comes down to getting out of the way and letting the trainers get to him.

In an amateur game there won’t be any trainers, so the thing to do is help him off the field, maybe drive him to the hospital.  But I’m not letting him crawl back to 1B so he can be PR for and refuse to tag him out.

I don’t remember what the batter who hit the ball to 3B that broke my nose a few years ago did.  I assume he still ran to first.  I don’t begrudge him for that.  It’s not like there’s anything he could have done once the ball left his bat anyway.

Apply the tag.  You’re all professionals, you are all playing to win.  If a picher threw out his elbow on ball 4, would you refuse the walk?

The only thing I’d do different is not walk away after applying the tag, but as Rally said it wasn’t as if there weren’t trainers around who could do the job better than me anyway.

Yup, agree with Rally.  If I am 100% certain I can tag him safely, I do.  Then I get the hell out of the way and let the trainers do their job.  If I can’t tag him safely (i.e. if someone is, say, convulsing on the ground in a seizure) I get the hell out of the way and let the trainers to their job.

With a bone sticking out of his leg, no one was going to carry Alou to second.  You apply the tag and say, “I’m sorry.”

It’s easy to say this about Jefferies, because he was not the greatest guy to play ball.  I suppose he could have just let the ump call him out for not reaching second, however, tagging him was the right thing to do.

Rally: in terms of the ball hitting your face, it’s not like he was necessarily aware of what happened to you. 

In my Jefferies example, he saw the bone sticking out of his leg, was disgusted by what he was witnessing as he was walking toward Alou, applied the tag, and then turned and walked away in disgust (at what he saw and maybe at what he did).  There was conscious thought there.  It was not bam-bam.

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How about if after Clint Malarchuk got a skate across his neck and he’s pumping blood after every breath (really happened 20 years ago) and the ref, for whatever reason (shock?) doesn’t blow the whistle (illustration purposes), are you going to shoot the puck in the net?

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There’s going to be some line at some point that you are not going to cross, isn’t there?  Basically, how bad does the situation have to be for you to put life ahead of baseball?

My line was the Jefferies / Alou play.

With a bone sticking out of his leg I am pretty sure that Alou wasn’t going to be crawling back to first base, and I am also pretty sure that the trainers would run onto the field while the play was still “live”.  When Jefferies tagged him out, the play was brought to a conclusion so that Alou could get the help he needed.

There’s a rule in hockey, and I suppose in all sports, that says the trainer can’t go on the ice until the play is blown dead.

But I’ve seen, on at least one occasion, where the trainer went onto the ice (on one end) while play was going on (at the other end).  Trainer basically is saying that the referee is in no position to decide if the play should go on, and decides for himself that he’s going out there for his player’s sake, even if his team was about to score.

The trainer doing this, effectively, blows the play dead (I don’t remember if the ref actually blew the play dead or not).

Like I said, we’ve all got some line to cross.  The trainer has an even lower line than I would.

I don’t hold Malarchuk and Alou/Jefferies on the same plane. One’s a broken leg, one’s an injury that could kill in mere minutes. I’d tag Alou and I’d carry the trainer out to Malarchuk.

Alou wasn’t rounding first—he was caught in a pickle between 1st and 2nd.  Snagged his cleats in the astroturf @ old Busch, if I recall.

I’d have applied the tag in that situation as well, though, although I believe Alou would have been out anyway upon leaving the basepaths or being helped by a trainer or teammate if the play was still live.

I agree with Mike.  I don’t take a shot on a bleeding goalie, if the refs don’t notice and blow the play dead then I do what needs to be done to make people notice and get help on the ice.

For Jeffries I don’t think there’s anything he could have done for Alou.  I’m assuming the dugouts were aware and trainers were already on the way to the field.

The Alou play was that he hit a single to the outfield, he rounded 1B, got his foot caught, and the bone came out.  The throw then came into Jefferies at 1B to tag him out.  He walked over at least 20 feet, maybe 30 feet to tag him out.

(This is all from memory, but it left quite an impression on me.)

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Ok, so you’re line is that the player has to be bleeding profusely for you to be a sportsman.  Is that correct? I’m not casting judgement.  It’s clear we all have a line.  I’m obviously in the minority.

Tango, what would you do?  Just not bother tagging him and let the umpires figure it out?

Sports like Hockey, Soccer, Basketball would call for doing whatever to get the game stopped.

In football if you hit a guy and knock him out do you not go for the loose ball?  Do you not continue the play upon seeing a defensive player break a leg in front of you?

Also, what Phil said.  What is the proper response?

I tag Alou out, and then kick the protruding bone on the way back to the dugout, all the while pumping my fist.

Phil, I hold the ball, call time, and wave for the trainer to come.

Tom, you lack the killer instinct. You gotta be willing to get in there, if necessary, with your own bare hands and rip that goddamn bone out. That’s what winning’s all about.

I think Jefferies did the right thing and calling his actions a “despicable act” seems way overboard.  In soccer when an opponent gets injured the team in possession of the ball often kicks the ball out of bounds to stop play, then the other team gives it back to them when play resumes.  Without some written or unwritten rule like this for baseball, I don’t see how the player has much other choice than to tag the runner.  Perhaps, the umpire should blow the play dead and call the runner out, but what happens if there is a runner headed home on the same play?  Jefferies quick tag may have allowed the trainer to come on the field earlier, so maybe he should be given some credit - who knows!

Having grown up playing all kinds of sports, we had an AYSO soccer game one time where one of the players got hurt during the game (kid was laying on the ground crying) while the action moved to the other end of the field the coach went out on to the field to attend to the injured player.  The coach got kicked out of the game, because there was a rule that no coach could go out on the field during the game without getting permission from the referee.

Only thing I can think of that Jefferies could’ve done differently was to look at the umpire and ask him if he had to tag Alou.  Would’ve been the same result (an out) but a few seconds longer for the trainer to be on the field.
vr, Xei

I don’t want to assume the trainer had to wait for Jeffries to tag Alou or the ump to call the play dead.  (If so, then Jeffries is a hero for acting quickly).  I would think a trainer would see a player in that obvious pain and just run onto the field.

Of course I would apply the tag, this is a silly debate…

I forgot, Felipe was his manager:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=lgocAAAAIBAJ&sjid=YXsEAAAAIBAJ&pg=2238,2927256&dq=moises+alou&hl=en

No video… MLBAM pulled it down.  Here’s the most of the story:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=we4NAAAAIBAJ&sjid=XG4DAAAAIBAJ&dq=moises%20alou&pg=2596,1024024

I wouldn’t even consider applying the tag.  Mostly because I would have already dropped the ball and my glove in my haste to run over and help him.  Then again, I have an award from my youth basketball league for ‘best sportmanship’ and I was a Boy Scout so I may not be the best example.

Wells - That’s not having the ‘killer instinct;’ that’s just being a horrible person.  I am a hugely competitive person, but I have never found that being a decent opponent has ever cost me the win.  I can see applying the tag and I wouldn’t think less of your for it.  But anything that would even imply celebration at an opponents injury would be reprehensible.

I am having second thoughts.  I don’t know what I would have done, because as I think about seeing that Malarchuk clip in my mind, I realize I would have absolutely no conscious control over my actions upon seeing that in person.  And maybe I’m enough of a wimp that Alou’s bone would have caused a similar nauseous reaction.

But in any case, I stand by the fact that I would not hold it against someone who continued to finish the play or shift, in a manner that assured the injured player’s safety.

While I do think that MLB lacks sportsmanship (for me, it’s the “selling the play” bull where fielders try to claim they caught a ball they really trapped, etc), I’m not sure this situation really illustrates it.  Granted, I didn’t see the play and I’m not going to even try watching video from work, but it seems unlikely that Jeffries could have done anything useful.

I’ve seen at least one play in MLB where a batter hits a pitcher with a line drive, freezes in shock and is subsequently thrown out by the pitcher’s teamate, who fields the ricochet.  The fielder has little way of knowing how badly his teamate is hurt (sometimes what looks AWFUL at first results in nothing more than a bruise), so I have trouble condemning it, even though I’d probably not do it that way (reason #1056 I’m not a MLB baseball player). 

About 10 years ago, Shane Spencer was playing LF for the Yankees.  Not particularly well, mind, but there you go.  Anyway, he went to field a routine single to left and his knee just buckled.  It was a bit sickening.  He struggled over to the ball and managed to flip it in to Jeter or the 3B (Brosius?  Ventura? I don’t recall).  I don’t recall whether the runner stopped at first or stretched it into a double (or if he could have done so even if he’d wanted to).  Is he morally obligated to stop running?  Does he even know Spencer just blew out his knee?

Players don’t call time. They request time from the umpire, who then does or doesn’t call time.

An umpire is not supposed to call time while the ball is still in play, which in this case it was.

However, using common sense through 30 years of umpiring, with Alou on the ground and Jeffries holding the ball, I would first see what the other runners (if any, don’t remember in this case) are doing, then call Alou out, call time and get the trainer on the field. That way the fielder, no matter who it is, doesn’t have to physically touch the player.

If there is still live action going on, then the play continues and the fielder will have to tag him, as he has to make a decison about how to play the ball.

They are grown men playing a game. They know the risks.

By the way, that’s the reason a HPB is a dead ball. No one wants the runners advancing and mandating play in that situation.

Hmmm… those are some good counters.  For example, two outfielders run into each other, and both are down, one unconscious, and the other barely moving.  It’s happened often enough.  (Was Cameron / Beltran like that?  Can’t remember.)

And you always see the semi-conscious fielder try to get up to get the ball and throw it in.

Now, an inside-the-parker is going to take 9-14 seconds starting at 1B (around the time the collision takes place).  What is the obligation of the umpire?  He’s not going to wait until the batter scores, is he?  He can simply call time immediately, can’t he?  And the trainer is not going to wait until the umpire calls time, does he?

And, suppose this is a game where there are no umpires, and players act as umpires (yes, it’s happened in pro sports).  What then?

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Ok, I will accept that while I was disgusted by what Jefferies did, it’s not clear that he was wrong.  He was wrong in my book, but not wrong in the morality book.

The reason that the Jefferies play is different is that he’s walking TOWARD Alou.  This is unlike the other plays where the players are in their own coccoon, and are not interacting with the person who sustained the worst injury they had ever seen.  If for example there was a play at home plate, while Alou is between 1B and 2B, and Jefferies throws home, I’d be ok with that.

By having Jefferies walking right at Alou, Jefferies is deciding that the play is alive, and that no one should get in his way.  If he throws home, the play may still be alive, but the trainer now can make the call to run onto the field unimpeded.

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A google of
Jefferies Alou
brings up this thread on page 1.

Add the word bone, and this thread is #1.

I would have just thrown the ball into the crowd.