Trick plays & travesties

However, Crosby Cougars manager Ross McMurry tweaked the trick play to use it with runners at second and third.

“I thought: ‘Well, I want them to throw the ball’ ... so we came up with a new way of doing it between second and third,” McMurry said.

In a May 1 playoff game against College Station, McMurry saw his team run it effectively when baserunners Adam Sloan and Coy Paine dashed home on a passed ball. With two outs and the pitch going to the backstop, Sloan raced home to score the tying run with a headfirst slide just ahead of the catcher’s throw to the pitcher covering. McMurry said the play wasn’t run to perfection, though, as the back runner, Paine, hesitated before taking off for home, but sprinted across the plate — with what proved to be the winning run in an eventual 5-3 victory — as the home plate umpire was still in the process of calling the lead runner safe.

“We kind of got lucky in that scenario because he should have been right behind the other guy,” McMurry said.

When Antonelli Baseball posted the cellphone footage of the play, host Matt Antonelli admitted he didn’t know the context of the strange-looking play — one that started with the back runner standing 10-15 feet behind third base, behind the third-base umpire even, while the lead runner took his lead off of third base. The comment section had some wild theories about the video, some saying it was staged, others saying it was AI generated, and many simply cracking jokes or admitting befuddlement.

The footage is, in fact, real.

“Honestly, it looks like a legal play to me upon watching this a couple times,” said Anthony Remedios, who works as a local Little League and travel baseball umpire.

“The runner can create his own base path, and he’s doing that,” Remedios said. “He’s in fair territory. He’s not in front of the runner in front of him. It’s a funky play for sure, but in the way the rules are written, I don’t see anything.”

The trick play evidently led to a swift rule change, however, by the University of Interscholastic League in Texas. McMurry — who is in his 14th year of coaching at the high school level, and his second at Crosby — said the UIL applied the travesty rule, which prohibits players from doing anything that makes a mockery or distortion of the game. The rule was reviewed by the UIL and the National Federation High School umpires, and it was decided Texas baserunners can now only take leads halfway to the forward base.

“They came up with this rule ... in the middle of our playoffs: if we were able to go halfway, we would be called out,” McMurry said. “The problem is if they make that a rule, it kind of screws up a lot of other things.”

The rule begs the question: Why isn’t it incumbent on the defense to simply play the game? In analyzing the video footage, the trick play isn’t anything that couldn’t be remedied by executing a proper rundown.

This is the modern trend, however — bureaucracy over baseball.

In MLB, it was decided two years ago that infielders can’t shift anymore. A longstanding baseball strategy gone because of bureaucracy. It’s a defensive strategy I witnessed in the first Giants game I ever attended in the 1970s when Willie McCovey came to bat. How did McCovey deal with the shift? Well, most times he would swing away. But, my first memory of seeing him play is his beating the shift by bunting up the third-base line and legging it out for a double. A future Hall of Famer who hit 521 home runs in his career, was in his 40s, dealing with chronic knee injuries, but wasn’t above playing the game the right way.

Now? Good luck seeing a strategic bunt, even with the mandated two infielders positioned on the left side of the infield. When the Giants got swept in Minnesota last weekend, they lost the opening game 3-1 while Twins third baseman Brooks Lee was regularly playing one step off the outfield grass — about the same place Paine positioned himself during the trick play for the Crosby Cougars — but the Giants never attempted a bunt. They went on to total three hits in the game. Even in the ninth inning, trailing by two runs, with a bunt single and a solo home run having essentially the same value toward win-percentage metrics, the top of the batting order, Luis Matos, Willy Adames and Jung Hoo Lee, were all too proud to bunt to get cleanup hitter Matt Chapman to the plate representing the tying run.

Trick plays, at least according to the powers that be in Texas high school baseball, are one their way out as well.

Therein lies the real travesty.

***

Congratulations to Anthony Remedios for earning his master’s degree from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

A 2020 Aragon graduate, Anthony walked in his second graduation ceremony in as many years Thursday in Phoenix. Last year, he earned his Bachelor of Arts in sports journalism with a minor in community sports management. He earned his most recent degree in mass communications as part of an accelerated master’s program.

As mentioned above, Anthony is still a local youth umpire, and will be returning home to San Mateo this summer. He will be suiting up with the boys in blue during one of the highlight events of the summer, the District 52 Little League tournaments, and will also work as the assignment supervisor for the umpiring crews.

He will also be searching for a full-time job as he embarks on a promising media career.

“It’s exciting, it’s scary, kind of uncertain; all that stuff at the same time,” Remedios said.

You’ve got this, Anthony. You’re a blue-chip prospect, kid. Always have been.

Terry Bernal is a sports writer for the Daily Journal. His views are his own. Please contact by email at terry@smdailyjournal.com, or via telephone at (650) 344-5200 x109.