Lessons learned in Little League

By Todd Jones - SportingNews

 

Do you remember in high school or, for that matter, in Little League when your coach would make you work on the hidden-ball trick? You know, the play where one of the infielders holds the ball in his glove but the baserunner thinks the pitcher has the ball. Before the pitcher gets on the mound, the runner takes his lead and -- boom! -- the infielder tags out the runner.

 

Well, it happened in the big leagues last week while I was pitching, and it probably won the game for us. I went out to pitch the eighth inning of a game we were leading by one run against the Diamondbacks. Their center fielder, Luis Terrero, led off with a bunt single. Then Quinton McCracken sacrificed and Tony Clark singled. Now I had guys on first and third with one out and was in big trouble with Craig Counsell up. As I was on my way back to the mound after backing up home plate on Clark's hit, I noticed that no one was looking to throw the ball back to me. I knew either our shortstop, Alex Gonzalez, or third baseman, Mike Lowell, had it. When I checked Gonzalez and saw that he didn't have it, I knew Mike had kept it.

 

My job then was to sell the play. There would be only a few seconds before everyone would start to wonder where the ball was. I started walking around the mound. About all I could think to do was to not go on the dirt of the mound. The play wouldn't have been legal if I had been on the mound when Mike tagged the runner.

 

So now I was behind the mound. I picked up the rosin bag, figuring that looked innocent enough. Then I got the bright idea to make hand gestures to the catcher, like we were going over where I was going to throw the ball if it was hit back to me. Then I turned to the shortstop as if to tell him, "Hey, if it's hit to me, I'm throwing it to you to start the double play." Now I'd done all that, and the runner still was on the base. Well, just at that time, Terrero stepped off and -- boom! -- Mike tagged him. Perfect.

 

Arizona's manager, Bob Melvin, came out to argue, but there wasn't anything he could say. We had pulled a fast one. The lesson: You'll never know when you might have to use a lesson learned in high school or Little League ... nah. The lesson is when you're in trouble, use whatever you can to get out of it -- even if you have to go back to your Little League days.

 

E-mail Todd Jones, a reliever for the Marlins, at tjones@sportingnews.com.

Nothing we didn't know from the reports after the game but it's nice to see Todd shamelessly plugging the Marlins in his column