I heard a guy telling a story recently about playing in a summer league baseball game with some of his high school teammates. It was a night game and the lighting was apparently a little subpar. He was playing left field and a ball was hit deep to left center. It cleared the wall for a homerun, but the umpire incorrectly decided it had bounced over and awarded the batter a double when he saw the center fielder throw his arms up (which they had been coached to do on plays like this).
The Coach of the team batting came out and argued, saying the ball had gone over the wall on a fly. So the umpire actually walked out to left field and asked this kid if he saw the ball go over the wall or not. Knowing he had to choose between the truth and the wrath of his Coach, he chose the truth. The batter finished circling the bases and the game went on.
After the inning ended, this kid was chewed up and down by his Coach. Apparently Coach actually wanted to see his player lie to the face of an umpire in a summer league baseball game that would never appear in any standings and would be forgotten about 15 minutes after it ended.
It reminded me of my high school team. We used to practice a play where if there were runners on first and second, and we had a two-man umpiring crew, our runner from second would cut about 15 feet off of his turn around third base on a hit to the outfield. Our Coach knew that there was no way either of the umpires would be in a position to notice that our runner skipped 3rd base. At the time, I thought that was pretty cool. Looking back, I'm really glad we never had a chance to use that play in a game. Imagine scoring a meaningful run in a big game by using a dirty play like that.
There are all kinds of rationalizations for coaching plays and tactics like these. I've heard garbage like "if you're not cheating, you're not trying" and other stuff like that. At the end of the day, teaching young people to win by cheating is slimy at best, and potentially damaging to them in the long term.
80's Lyric
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