“Give Derek Jeter an Oscar. And extra MVP consideration,” Phil Rogers wrote in the Chicago Tribune.
Gary Shelton, writing in the Tampa Bay Times, wasn’t as impressed.
“Suddenly, Jeter was in absolute agony,” Shelton wrote. “It was like he was one of those Western outlaws who had just had the gun shot from his hand by Wyatt Earp. There hasn’t been this much torment to a guy’s hand since Darth Vader sliced off Luke Skywalker’s in the Empire Strikes Back.”
Shelton went on to say his problem was with the theatrics, not that Jeter was willing to take first base when he wasn’t actually hit. He understood, just as Jeter understood and Rays manager Joe Maddon understood, that a player’s responsibility in such a case isn’t to the truth. It’s not a crime, not even a baseball crime, to take what’s given to you even when you technically don’t deserve it.
“It hit the bat,” Jeter admitted after the game. “[Barksdale] told me to go to first. I’m not going to tell him, ‘I’m not going to go to first,’ you know? My job is to get on base.”
He got on base, and Curtis Granderson followed with a two-run home run that gave the Yankees the lead. As it turned out, Dan Johnson hit a two-run home run off Phil Hughes in the bottom of the inning and the Rays still won the game.
Maybe that’s why Maddon could later joke about it.
“There’s several thespians throughout baseball,” Maddon said. “I thought Derek did a great job, and I applaud it, because I wish our guys would do the same thing.”
It usually doesn’t work anymore, now that Major League Baseball allows the use of instant replay to challenge calls. If Jeter’s acting job happened today, there’s no doubt Maddon would have challenged and little doubt the call would have been overturned.
But as we saw in the 2017 playoffs, even in today’s game players could get away with it. Lonnie Chisenhall didn’t get hit by a Chad Green pitch in Game 2 of the ALDS in Cleveland, but home-plate umpire Dan Iassogna said he did. Yankees catcher Gary Sanchez seemed to know the ball actually hit the knob of Chisenhall’s bat, but Yankees manager Joe Girardi inexplicably declined to ask for a challenge.
On that play, Chisenhall didn’t do any acting (which probably should have been a tipoff to Iassogna and Girardi that he wasn’t really hit). He just stood there. He didn’t admit the ball had hit his bat and not his hand, but why should he?
As he said after the game, “I’m not the umpire.”
He’s a player. As Jeter said, his job is to get on base. You’re not supposed to cheat to do it, but what he did wasn’t cheating. It was gamesmanship.
Nothing in the written or unwritten rules says it’s not okay.
And then there’s what Jose Tabata of the Pirates did in June 2015. Max Scherzer of the Nationals was one out away from a perfect game when Tabata came to the plate in the ninth inning at Nationals Park. In fact, Scherzer was one strike away when the count went to 0-2. He missed with a slider and a fastball to go 2-2, and Tabata fouled off a slider and two more fastballs. Scherzer’s next pitch was another slider, off the plate inside. And you can see clearly on the replay that Tabata lowers his front elbow, covered by padding, and makes sure the pitch hits him.
On the Nationals’ MASN broadcast, F.P. Santangelo was incredulous.
“I got hit by more pitches than most, and there’s no way I’m leaning into a pitch down 6–0 when a guy has a perfect game going,” F.P. said. “I would never do that.”
F.P. got hit by pitch 25 times in a season, so he ought to know the etiquette.
As for Scherzer, his immediate answer was that he was disappointed in himself rather than upset with what Tabata did.
“It was a slider that just backed up, and it hit him,” Scherzer said. “I don’t blame him for doing it. I mean, heck, I’d probably do the same thing. So it was a pitch that got away from me, and it hit him.”
The written rules of baseball say a batter isn’t entitled to first base when he “makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball.” In reality, umpires almost never apply the rule, and some guys make it part of their game to get on base by turning into inside pitches and allowing themselves to get hit. Pitchers don’t love that, especially when the guy gets hit on what pitchers like to describe as the “body armor” some guys put on their front arm when the go to the plate.
Home plate umpire Mike Muchlinski could have ruled Tabata wasn’t legally hit, since he certainly made no attempt to avoid the pitch. Muchlinski didn’t do that.
“He tried to throw a slider inside, and it didn’t break. It stayed right there,” Tabata said. “And he got me. He got me on the elbow, on the protection [his elbow pad]. I want to do my job.”
Scherzer went on to do his job, getting Josh Harrison on a fly ball to left field to complete his first career no-hitter (he’d throw another one later that season against the Mets). A no-hitter is special, but a perfect game is legendary. In all the time Major League Baseball has been played, there have been just 23 of them (through 2018).
Other pitchers have lost perfect games in the ninth, and even with two out in the ninth. But Scherzer was just the second pitcher to lose a perfect game by hitting a batter with two out in the ninth. The other was George “Hooks” Wiltse of the Giants (his brother was “Snake” Wiltse), on July 4, 1908. Like Scherzer, Wiltse went to a 2-2 count before he hit Phillies pitcher George McQuillan on the shoulder. Like Scherzer, Wiltse ended up with a no-hitter, although he had to pitch 10 innings to finish his.
Sadly, there’s no video showing whether McQuillan leaned into the pitch.
29. Every Player Can Be “Johnny Hustle”
WHEN MANNY MACHADO ARRIVED IN THE MAJOR leagues as a 20-year-old rookie in 2013, it was easy to compare him to Alex Rodriguez. He was a big, athletic infielder from Miami. He was a shortstop who was moving to third base.
He even wore A-Rod’s No. 13 on his back.
“Same number, same actions,” the scouts said.
But when he got to the Baltimore Orioles that year, Machado didn’t act like another A-Rod. He was “sincere,” Orioles manager Buck Showalter said. He had a knack for doing and even saying the right thing.
“I’m Manny,” Machado said. “I’m going to be myself. I came in, and I didn’t step on anyone’s toes. I came in to just be myself and play baseball.”
What happened to that guy?
Five years later, Machado seemed more like A-Rod than ever. Maybe worse, because A-Rod was never heard saying, “I’m not the type of player that’s going to be ‘Johnny Hustle.’”
Machado said exactly that, to Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, in the middle of the 2018 National League Championship Series. With his team fighting for a World Series. Just a few weeks before he would hit the free agent market for the first time in his career.
On the one hand, Machado had become one of the best talents in the game. On the other, he’d become a player who was… proud of not hustling?
Machado went on to say he realizes it looks bad when he doesn’t run hard on a ground ball, or when he has to stop at first base on what should have been a double because he dogged it out of the box.
“I look back at the video and I’m like, ‘Woah, what am I doing?’” he told Rosenthal.
Realizing (or being told) his comments sounded bad, Machado later tried to retreat in an interview with MLB.com.
“When I was asked that question, I was definitely on the defensive, and I was wrong to answer it the way that I did, because looking back, it doesn’t come across how I meant it,” Machado said. “For me, I was trying to talk about how I’m not the guy who is eye wash. There’s a difference between fake hustle for show and being someone who tries hard to win. I’ve always been the guy who does whatever he can to win for his team.”
The damage control didn’t sound very convincing, not when people saw what they saw in the playoffs.
Machado is
hardly the only player in the big leagues who doesn’t run out every ball. But it’s still true that every manager will say he expects his team to play hard above all else, and that effort is one thing you can always bring to a game.
It’s beyond just being an unwritten rule, because it isn’t something that has changed or will change. You hit the ball and you run, and you do it every time if you want to be someone who is talked about as playing the game right.
It’s why Hall of Famer Jim Palmer reacted so strongly to Machado not running.
“Once again Manny doesn’t run hard,” Palmer tweeted during the NLCS. “Down 1–0 in series, 0–0 game in 4th. Too tired to run hard for 90 feet. But wants the big $$ #pathetic.”
It was quite a postseason for Machado, who was also called for an illegal slide into second base, handing the Brewers a double play, and twice kicked the first baseman’s foot while crossing the bag.
Oh, and he hit .182 with a .390 OPS in the World Series, which his Los Angeles Dodgers lost to the Boston Red Sox. A website called The Baseball Gauge calculated a stat called championship win probability added, which tried to look at how each at-bat during the postseason affected a team’s chances of winning the World Series. Machado, for what it’s worth, ranked 238th among the 240 players, ahead of only Milwaukee Brewers reliever Jeremy Jeffress and Dodgers infielder/outfielder Enrique Hernandez.
Beyond not getting big hits, Machado seemed to be in the news constantly for doing something wrong. Major League Baseball fined him $10,000 for kicking the back of Brewers first baseman Jesus Aguilar’s foot during the NLCS. Aguilar left his foot on the bag longer than necessary after taking a throw from shortstop on a Machado ground ball, but it was hard to understand why Machado would kick out at him while going past.
“It’s a dirty play,” Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich told reporters that night. “It’s a dirty play by a dirty player.”
And yet, a week later, Machado stepped on the foot of Boston Red Sox first baseman Steve Pearce in a similar-looking play in the World Series. The Pearce play clearly seemed unintentional, and Pearce brushed it aside by telling reporters he “barely felt it.”
Machado said he and Pearce are “kind of, almost best friends,” but it was yet another play that left Machado in a bad light.
“Hey Machado, step on Derrek Lee’s heel like that and see what happens,” former major league infielder Ryan Theriot posted on Twitter.
The Aguilar and Pearce plays will stick with Machado, just as A-Rod will always have the play from the 2004 American League Championship Series where he tried to slap the ball out of Red Sox pitcher Bronson Arroyo’s glove. On that play, where Rodriguez was trying to avoid making an out at first base, he was instead called out for interference. He’d violated baseball etiquette, but he had also violated baseball rules.
Machado was already out on his two plays at first base. He was also out on the ground ball to short that ended the fourth inning of Game 2 of the NLCS in Milwaukee.
“Deep in the hole… long throw… Machado’s not running,” Joe Buck said on the Fox broadcast. “[Orlando] Arcia made the play, had to double-clutch… and Machado didn’t hustle.”
No, he’s definitely not “Johnny Hustle.”
And that breaks one of the most important unwritten rules of all.
30. Deception Is (Sometimes) Part of the Game
THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH THE HIDDEN ball trick, unless you’re the one that gets caught by it. Even then, it’s your fault for not paying attention.
It’s not against the rules. It’s not against the unwritten rules.
Some forms of deception are. There’s an entire section on balks, which in many cases are basically attempts by the pitcher to deceive a baserunner.
“The purpose of the balk rule is to prevent the pitcher from deliberately deceiving the baserunner.” It says so right there in the rules. It’s under Rule 6.02(a) Comment (Rule 8.05 Comment). It couldn’t be clearer.
You can’t deceive the baserunner. Except when you can. The balk rule applies to pitchers, and it applies to the way the pitcher delivers the ball to the plate or throws to a base. It doesn’t apply to what Blue Jays shortstop Ryan Goins did to Yankees baserunner Todd Frazier in September 2017 at Rogers Centre.
Frazier was on second base when Jacoby Ellsbury flied out to right field for the second out of the third inning. Jays right fielder Jose Bautista threw the ball in to Goins, who was standing right next to Frazier at second base. With Frazier looking the other way, Goins faked throwing the ball back to the pitcher. When Frazier stepped off the base, Goins tagged him and the inning was over.
Frazier didn’t complain. He understood it wasn’t Goins who had done anything wrong. It was him.
“It’s a bonehead play by me, to be honest with you,” the very honest Frazier told reporters. “I have to have a better mindset about what is going on in the game. It’s not a good play on my part. It could have changed the game.”
Not everyone who gets caught by a deke is so understanding. Former major-league second baseman Marty Barrett was a master at it, earning him the nickname “Dekemaster,” but rival Doug DeCinces reportedly accused him of “Little League bullshit” after Barrett caught DeCinces asleep off second base in a 1985 game in Boston. The most surprising (and embarrassing) part about that play was it was the second time in a month Barrett had pulled the same trick on the Angels.
“I’m surprised [it worked], because [Angels manager] Gene Mauch is a real good baseball man,” Barrett said. “[But] it could happen to our team, it could happen to me. As long as guys keep getting off base, it’s going to work.”
Matt Williams loved the hidden-ball trick when he played third base for the Giants, Indians, and Diamondbacks. In one game in 1994, Williams pulled it on Dodgers rookie Rafael Bournigal after Bournigal had reached third on a triple. Bournigal even admitted what happened after Williams pretended to give the ball to pitcher Dave Burba.
“He asked me to step off the bag so he could clean it,” Bournigal told reporters. “You have no friends in this business.”
There are other ways to deke runners that also work.
Take the play where a runner from first base is going on the pitch. The batter hits a fly ball, but the runner doesn’t realize it. One of the middle infielders makes like he’s fielding a ground ball, convincing the runner to slide. Meanwhile, the outfielder is making the catch and throwing back to first to double the runner up. You see it done with some regularity by veteran infielders, and it works a lot of the time.
It worked big-time in a slightly different way in one of the most famous World Series games ever, Game 7 in the 1991 Series between the Braves and the Twins. Lonnie Smith was on first base after a leadoff single in the eighth inning of a scoreless game. Terry Pendleton followed with a drive into the left-center field gap. It easily should have scored Smith and put the Braves ahead. But Smith fell for a deke by Twins second baseman Chuck Knoblauch and shortstop Greg Gagne. Knoblauch made as if he were fielding a ground ball, while Gagne went to second base as if to take the throw. A confused Smith stopped just past the bag at second, holding up just long enough that he was only able to advance to third base.
Given the reprieve, Twins starter Jack Morris got out of the inning with the game still scoreless. Morris never did allow a run, going all 10 innings before the Twins won the game and the World Series on Gene Larkin’s single in the bottom of the 10th.
What Knoblauch and Gagne did violated no rule, not a written one and not an unwritten one. It’s embarrassing for a player who falls for it, but nobody gets hurt. Except when someone does.
It happened to Gene Clines of the Pirates way back in July 1973. He was going on a pitch that ended up being called ball four. Derrel Thomas of the Padres faked a tag, forcing Clines into a late slide. Clines hurt his ankle on the play and was out of the lineup for the next few weeks.
Not surprisingly, the Nationals threw at Kang the next time he came to the plate, leading to a brawl.
Other attempts to deceive the runner are fine. Outfielders can put their glove up to act as if they think they’re going to catch a fly ball, even when they know they have no choice but to play it on a hop. If the baserunner holds up and doesn’t get an extra base, that’s on him—and it’s to the credit of the outfielder. Same goes for the play Manny Machado made for the Orioles when he had just come up to the big leagues at age 20. Machado, playing third base, fielded a slow roller and realized he wouldn’t have a play at first base. He also knew there was a runner behind him who had just reached (and rounded) third base. Smartly, Machado fielded the ball and faked a throw to first, before wheeling and throwing back to third to get the runner.
There’s no doubt Machado deceived the runner with the play. There’s also no doubt what he did was legal under baseball rules—and under the unwritten rules.
So what about what Alex Rodriguez did in May 2007 against the Blue Jays? You may remember it. Howie Clark certainly does.
Clark was the Blue Jays third baseman that day. He was standing near the base, ready to catch a pop fly, when Rodriguez, the Yankees baserunner, ran right behind him. As he ran past, A-Rod decided to distract Clark by yelling something. A-Rod later said he yelled, “Ha!”
Clark, thinking he must have heard shortstop John McDonald calling him off, backed away as the ball dropped. The inning continued, Jorge Posada (who hit the pop-up) got credit for a hit, and Jason Giambi followed with a two-run single.
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